IRLF 


LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


Gl  FT    OF 


Class 


SOCIALISM 

BY 

W.  H.  MALLOCK,  M.A. 

of  England 


A  SERIES  OF 
LECTURES  DELIVERED  AT 

Columbia  University 
Harvard  University 
Johns  Hopkins  University 
Univenity  of  Pennsyh 
University  of  Chicago 


UNDER  THE  AUSPICES  OF 
The  Public   Lecture  Bureau  of 

The  National  Civic  Federation 

February,  1907 


SOCIALISM 

BY 

W.  H.  MALLOCK,  M.A., 

OF  ENGLAND 


Or  THE 


Or  T 

UNIVERSITY    )) 


THE  N^criONAi  Cfvic  FEDERATION 

281  Fourth  Avenue 

New  York 


\V.    H.    MALLOCK,    M.A. 


- 

Or  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

[AL'f ', 

LECTURE  I. 

The  invitation  with  which  I  have  been  honored  by 
The  National  Civic  Federation  of  New  York  to  de- 
liver a  short  series  of  addresses  on  those  modern  eco- 
nomic theories  which,  under  the  name  of  socialism,  are 
enjoying  so  considerable  a  vogue  both  in  this  country 
and  in  Europe,  is  an  invitation  which  I  have  accepted 
with  a  pleasure  proportionate  to  the  interest  of  the 
subject. 

What  socialism  really  means,  in  so  far  as  it  means 
anything  distinctive,  definite,  and  coherent,  is  a  question 
I  will  discuss  presently.  But  whatever  it  means,  it 
stands,  on  its  practical  side,  for  some  scheme  for  bet- 
tering the  condition  of  the  majority  of  the  human  race, 
by  reorganizing  society  on  a  basis  substantially  different 
from  that  on  which  it  rests  now,  and  on  which  it  has 
rested  always,  from  the  beginnings  of  civilization  till 
to-day. 

Now,  any  scheme  of  this  kind  which  aims  at  the  prac- 
tical introduction  of  some  radically  novel  principle, 
however  practical  may  be  its  object,  and  however 
strongly  it  may  appeal  to  the  practical  and  concrete 
passions,  necessarily  implies  and  rests  upon  certain 
intellectual  judgments  or  theories  with  regard  to  the 
facts  and  forces  of  society  and  of  human  nature.  One 
of  the  greatest  groups  of  changes  that  have  taken  place 
in  modern  times  are  those  which  rest  on  the  introduction 
and  the  perfecting  of  the  steam  engine.  The  steam 
engine  and  the  steam  printing  press  may  be  called  the 
physical  basis  of  that  diffused  knowledge  and  that  force 
of  public  opinion  which  in  many  minds  arouse  such  un- 
bounded enthusiasm.  But  on  what  rested  the  possibility 
of  the  introduction  of  the  steam  engine  and  the  steam 
printing  press?  It  rested  on  the  fact  that  by  a  course 

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of  dispassionate  study,  certain  men  arrived  at  a  series 
of  dispassionate  conclusions  which  proved  to  be  in 
minute  harmony  with  the  powers  and  processes  of  na- 
ture. The  same  is  the  case  with  socialism.  Whatever 
its  ultimate  objects,  even  those  who  are  most  enamored 
of  them  must  admit  that  their  practical  value  depends 
on  whether  the  means  by  which  socialists  propose  to 
achieve  them  are  in  harmony  with  the  character,  the 
faculties,  and  the  limitations  of  human  beings  generally ; 
and  here  we  have  a  question,  not  of  feeling,  but  of  dry 
scientific  fact. 

It  is  this  aspect  of  our  subject  to  which  I  wish  to 
direct  your  attention.  I  will  ask  you,  for  the  moment, 
to  lay  mere  feeling  aside;  and,  admitting  that  in  the 
world  as  it  is  there  are  many  evils  which  we  all  desire 
to  mitigate,  to  consider  in  a  sober  and  scientific  spirit, 
whether  the  class  of  remedies  which  go  by  the  name 
of  socialism  would  produce — I  do  not  say  merely  a 
preferable — but  even  a  practicable,  a  working  alterna- 
tive. 

I  think  I  may  venture  to  say  that  a  large  number 
of  highly  educated  persons  who,  actuated  no  doubt  by 
generous  and  unselfish  sympathies,  are  anxious  to  claim 
for  themselves  the  name  of  socialists,  have  never  sub- 
mitted themselves  to  this  discipline  of  preliminary  scien- 
tific inquiry.  They  see  that  under  the  existing  order 
of  things  many  evils  exist.  They  are  persuaded  that 
these  evils  are  due  to  the  general  constitution  of  so- 
ciety, and  that  the  evils  would  disappear  were  that 
general  constitution  altered.  Such  being  the  case,  they 
leap  to  the  curious  conclusion  that  the  only  alternative 
to  the  existing  state  of  things  is  socialism,  and  that, 
by  leaping  into  the  fire,  we  shall  free  ourselves  from 
all  the  evils  of  the  frying  pan.  They  are  like  men 
traveling  on  a  road  rough,  hilly  and  dangerous,  which 
interposes  many  difficulties  between  them  and  the  point 
which  they  desire  to  reach,  and  who,  impatient  of  these 
difficulties,  propose,  instead  of  improving  the  road,  to 


take  a  short  cut  toward  the  point  desired  across  a  quick- 
sand. The  quicksand  is  level  and  would  not  wound 
their  feet.  They  never  pause  to  inquire  whether  it 
would  not  engulf  the  pedestrian.  It  is  not  the  road, 
therefore  it  must  be  better  than  the  road.  Such  is 
their  simple  logic.  What  socialism  is  in  detail,  as  a 
constructive  scheme,  they  make  no  attempt  to  investi- 
gate. They  allow  it  to  impress  their  imaginations  like 
a  building  seen  in  a  dream;  but  they  never  inquire,  as  prac- 
tical builders  are  bound  to  do,  whether  such  a  building 
is  a  structural  possibility  or  no.  They  never  consider 
in  detail  the  principles  of  its  structure  at  all. 

Persons  whose  minds  are  in  a  condition  so  vague  as 
this  may  be  admirable  in  respect  of  their  sympathies, 
but  their  opinions  with  regard  to  socialism  as  a  prac- 
tical programme  are  valueless.  Nor  is  there  any  legiti- 
mate excuse  for  this  vagueness.  If  socialism  represents  no 
social  principles  definitely  and  identifiably  different  from 
those  in  operation  now,  it  is  idle  to  talk  of  the  progress 
which  socialistic  opinion  has  made,  or  the  practical  con- 
sequences which  may  arise  from  it;  but  practically  this 
is  not  the  case.  Whatever  may  be  the  fallacies  involved 
in  the  socialistic  gospel,  it  at  all  events  represents  prin- 
ciples which,  so  far  as  they  go,  are  definite.  What  we 
have  is  no  question  of  mere  verbal  definition.  It  is  a 
question  of  historical  fact.  Any  body  of  opinion  which 
tends  to  have  a  practical  influence  is  as  a  fact  those 
distinctive  principles  and  promises  in  virtue  of  which  it 
enlists  the  mass  of  its  believers  and  adherents,  and  bands 
them  together  as  a  party  distinct  from  and  opposed  to 
others.  And  what  socialism  is,  when  estimated  in  this 
way,  it  is  very  easy  to  ascertain,  finding  that,  in  the 
modern  world  no  less  than  in  the  ancient  the  few  are 
possessed  of  more  wealth  than  the  many,  it  proposes 
to  alter  this  arrangement  by  a  definite  reorganization 
of  society,  by  means  of  which  the  many,  without  any 
additional  exertion,  will  find  their  position  revolution- 
ized and  their  wealth  indefinitely  increased.  So  far, 


the  promises  of  socialism  merely  concide  with  a  dream 
which  has  haunted  the  imagination  of  multitudes  ever 
since  civilization  began.  They  may  have  sighed  for 
Utopia  as  a  plain  woman  may  sigh  for  beauty,  but  .they 
have  never,  except  on  passing  occasions,  and  on  a  re- 
stricted scale,  organized  their  aspirations  into  anything 
Kke  a  practical  demand,  and  the  reason  is  that,  though 
the  prospect  of  Utopia  was  pleasing,  they  secretly  re- 
garded it  as  inaccessible.  It  affected  them  as  little  as 
the  promises  of  a  quack  doctor  would,  who  offered  to 
sell  them  a  pill  which  would  make  them  all  immortal. 
It  is,  indeed,  a  universal  truth  that  no  desire  for  any 
desirable  object  becomes  practical  unless  the  condi- 
tions of  knowledge  prevalent  amongst  those  desiring  it 
are  such  as  to  enable  them  to  believe  that  the  desired 
object  it  attainable.  Nothing  illustrates  this  fact  more 
clearly  than  the  history  of  socialism.  Socialism  in  its 
earlier  stages,  as  socialists  now  admit,  was  Utopian; 
and,  being  Utopian,  it  was  ineffective.  It  first  became 
an  organized  movement  when  a  great  thinker  arose  who 
supplied  it  with  a  foundation  in  science.  Then  the 
multitudes  began,  for  the  first  time,  to  feel  that  knowl- 
edge was  on  their  side,  and  that  the  desirable  was  also 
in  sober  truth  the  obtainable.  The  thinker  I  refer  to 
was  the  celebrated  Karl  Marx,  whose  work  on  Capital, 
published  about  the  middle  of  the  ipth  century,  has 
been  acclaimed  throughout  Europe  and  America  as  the 
scientific  bible  of  socialism. 

The  practical  outcome  of  the  scientific  economics  of 
Marx  is  summed  up  in  the  formula  which  is  the  watch- 
word of  popular  socialism.  "All  wealth  is  due  to  labor ; 
therefore  all  wealth  ought  to  go  to  the  laborer" — a  doc- 
trine in  itself  not  novel,  but  presented  by  Marx  as 
the  outcome  of  an  elaborate  system  of  economics. 

This  formula,  whatever  may  be  its  intrinsic  truth  or 
falsehood,  illustrates  by  its  success  as  an  instrument 
of  popular  agitation  the  fact  on  which  I  have  been  just 
now  insisting,  that  desire  becomes  practically  active 


only  when  accompanied  by  a  belief  that  its  object  is 
capable  of  attainment.  But  it  does  more  than  illustrate 
this  general  fact.  It  crystallizes  and  gives  prominence 
to  a  most  important  economic  truth.  The  truth  to 
which  I  refer  is  this— that  the  possibility  of  redistribu- 
ting wealth  depends  on  the  causes  by  which 
wealth  is  produced.  Wealth,  says  Marx,  not 
only  ought  to  be,  but  actually  can  be  distributed 
amongst  a  certain  class  of  persons,  namely,  the  labor- 
ers, and  why  can  it  be?  Because  these  laborers 
comprise  in  the  acts  of  labor  everything  that  is  in- 
volved in  the  production  of  it.  In  other  words,  wealth 
is  like  water  pumped  up  into  a  reservoir,  and'  thence 
conducted  by  pipes  into  innumerable  private  houses.  If 
the  men  who  draw  it  off  at  the  taps  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  quantity  that  is  pumped  up — if,  for  example, 
the  whole  is  pumped  up  by  angels,  who  can  pump  up  as 
much  or  as  little  as  they  please — it  is  evident  that  the 
amount  which  the  men  consume,  and  the  manner  in 
which  they  apportion  it,  will  depend  in  the  last  resort 
not  on  the  men,  but  on  the  angels ;  for  if  the  angels  dis- 
approve of  the  men's  use  of  the  water  they  will  sim- 
ply cut  off  the  supply.  If  the  men  themselves  are  to 
determine  the  distribution,  without  reference  to  the  will 
of  anyone  else,  they  can  do  so  only  because,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  they  do  all  the  pumping  themselves  without 
external  assistance.  Such,  in  an  expanded  form,  being 
the  application  which  Marx  makes  of  his  doctrine  that 
labor  alone  produces  all  economic  wealth,  let  us  con- 
sider this  doctrine  itself,  which  remains  the  fulcrum 
of  the  socialistic  lever.  In  view  of  this  fact  you  will 
not,  I  hope,  find  it  uninteresting  if  I  give  you  a  brief 
account  of  the  general  argument  of  Marx. 

The  doctrine  that  labor  is  the  source  of  all  wealth  is ! 
apt  to   strike   many  people  at   first  sight   as  obviously  J 
incomplete.     Capital  generally,  and  in  especial  machin- 
ery, must,  they  will  say,  contribute  something;  but  to 
such  objections  Marx  has  a  most  ingenious  answer.    He 

7 


starts  with  the  fact  that  in  the  modern  world,  where 
labor  is  minutely  divided,  each  producer  or  group  of 
laborers,  produces  only  one  commodity,  of  which  the 
producer  himself  consumes  little,  and  very  often  nothing. 
A  man,  for  example,  may  not  himself  smoke,  and  yet  his 
whole  industrial  business  may  be  to  produce  cigars. 
The  products  of  his  industry  are,  therefore,  to  himself 
valueless.  They  possess  value  for  him,  or  are  in  other 
words  wealth  only  in  so  far  as  he  can  exchange  them 
for  other  commodities  which  he  personally  requires 
and  can  enjoy.  His  wealth,  therefore,  is  measured  by 
the  quantity  of  assorted  products  which  he  can  get  in 
exchange  for  the  total  of  the  product  which  he  himself 
produces.  What,  then,  is  the  measure  of  value  which 
regulates  the  quantity  of  assorted  commodities  which 
the  possessor  of  a  given  stock  of  one  commodity,  such 
as  cigars,  is  able  to  get  in  exchange  for  it?  And  for 
his  answer  to  this  question  Marx  goes  to  Ricardo  and 
the  orthodox  economists  generally  and  declares  that 
this  measure  of  value  by  which  the  exchange  of  various 
commodities  is  regulated,  is  the  amount  of  labor  which 
is  normally  embodied  in  each  of  them,  the  labor  in 
question  being  the  labor  of  the  average  man,  measured 
in  terms  of  time.  The  meaning  of  this  doctrine  is  very 
vividly  illustrated  by  the  proposal  to  substitute  for  or- 
dinary money  what  the  socialists  call  labor-certificates, 
by  means  of  which  the  product  of  an  hour  of  any  one 
kind  of  labor — say,  whiskey  making,  will  exchange  for 
the  product  of  an  hour  of  any  other  kind  of  labor — say 
a  hundred  copies  of  a  tract  which  demands  that  whiskey 
making  should  be  prohibited 

Having  thus  settled  that  average  labor,  the  measure 
of  which  is  time,  is  the  sole  source  and  measure  of 
wealth  or  economic  values,  Marx  goes  on  to  point  out 
that  by  the  improvement  of  industrial  processes,  and 
more  especially  by  the  development  of  machinery,  labor 
in  recent  times  has  been  growing  more  and  more  produc- 
tive, so  that  each  labor  hour  results  in  an  increased  out- 

8 


put  of  commodities.  Thus  a  man  who,  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  ago  could  have  only  just  kept  himself  alive 
by  an  expenditure  of  his  entire  labor  day,  can  now  keep 
himself  alive  by  an  expenditure  of  no  more  than  half 
of  it.  The  remainder  goes  to  produce  what  Marx  called 
a  surplus  value,  by  which  he  meant  all  that  output  of 
wealth  which  is  beyond  what  is  practically  necessary  to 
keep  the  laborers  alive.  But  what  becomes  of  it?  Does 
it  go  to  the  laborers  who  have  produced  it  ?  No,  replies 
Marx.  On  the  contrary,  as  fast  as  it  is  produced,  it  is 
abstracted  from  the  laborers  in  a  manner  which  he  goes 
on  to  analyze,  by  the  capitalists. 

Here  Marx  advances  to  the  second  stage  of  his  argu- 
ment. His  general  conception  of  capital  is  the  instru- 
ments of  production— especially  those  vast  aggregates  of 
modern  machinery,  by  the  use  of  which  labor  has  so 
vastly  increased  its  output.  Now  here,  says  Marx,  the 
capitalist  will  hasten  to  object  that  the  increased  output 
is  due  not  to  labor,  but  to  the  machinery ;  and  to  such 
an  objection  the  answer,  he  says,  is  this:  That  the  ma- 
chinery itself  is  nothing  but  past  labor  in  disguise.  It  is 
past  labor  fossilized,  or  embodied  in  a  permanent  form, 
and  used  by  present  labor  to  assist  it  in  its  own 
operations.  Labor,  therefore — common,  average  labor, 
remains  the  sole  agent  in  production  after  all.  Capital, 
however,  possesses  this  peculiarity — that,  being  labor  in 
a  fossil  state,  it  is  capable  of  being  detached  from  the 
laborers,  and  is  thus  capable  of  being  appropriated  by 
other  people ;  and  the  meaning,  he  says,  of  capitalism 
in  the  modern  world  is  the  appropriation  of  the  imple- 
ments of  production  by  a  minority  who  are  non-pro- 
ducers. This  process,  says  Marx,  had  its  first  begin- 
nings in  the  downfall  of  the  feudal  system,  but  it  did 
not  assume  great  proportions  till  the  introduction  of 
steam  power,  and  the  development  of  great  factories, 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when,  for 
the  old  implements  owned  by  the  individuals  who 
worked  them  were  gradually  substituted  machines  for 


the  use  of  each  of  which  hundreds  or  even  thousands  of 
men  were  necessary,  and  these  huge  implements  of  pro- 
duction, unlike  the  small  ones  which  they  superseded, 
fell  into  the  hands  of  a  limited  and  non-laboring  class, 
the  actual  workers  being  left  with  no  implements  at 
all.  The  people  at  large,  in  fact,  became  like  a  single 
body  of  mill  hands,  who  must  either  be  given  employ- 
ment in  a  particular  mill  or  starve,  and  the  possessing 
class  as  a  whole  became  like  the  owner  of  such  a  mill, 
who,  practically  holding  the  keys  of  life  and  death,  is 
able  to  impose  on  the  hands  almost  any  terms  he 
pleases  as  the  price  of  admission  to  his  premises  and 
to  the  privilege  of  using  his  machinery.  And  this  price 
which  the  owner  under  these  circumstances  will  exact 
— such  was  the  contention  of  Marx — inevitably  must 
come,  and  historically  came  to  this — namely,  the  entire 
amount  of  the  goods  which  the  hands  produce,  except 
that  minimum  which  is  absolutely  necessary  to  keep  the 
hands  alive.  Thus  all  capital,  all  profits,  and  all  inter- 
est on  capital,  are  fundamentally  neither  more  nor 
less  than  an  abstraction  from  labor  of  commodities 
which  manual  labor  produces,  and  manual  labor  alone. 
The  argument  of  Marx  is  not,  however,  finished  yet. 
There  remains  a  third  part  which  we  still  have  to  con- 
sider. Writing  as  he  did  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  he  said  that  the  process  of  capitalistic  appropria- 
tion had  not  yet  completed  itself.  A  remnant  of  the 
old  class  of  producers  and  a  middle  class  connected 
with  them  still  survived.  But,  he  continued,  in  all 
capitalistic  countries  a  new  movement,  inevitable  from 
the  first,  had  already  set  in,  and  its  pace  was  daily 
accelerating.  Just  as  the  earlier  capitalists  had  swal- 
lowed up  most  of  the  small  producers,  so  were  greater 
capitalists  now  swallowing  up  the  smaller,  and  the 
other  classes  were  becoming  to  an  increasing  degree 
the  victims.  Wages,  he  said,  were  regulated  by  an 
iron  law.  Under  the  system  of  capitalism  it  was  an 
absolute  impossibility  that  they  could  rise,  the  result  be- 

10 


ing,  he  said,  in  language  that  became  proverbial,  that  the 
rich  are  getting  richer  and  fewer.  The  poor  more  nu- 
merous and  poorer,  and  the  middle  classes  are  being 
crushed  out;  and  a  time,  he  continued,  was  already  in 
sight — a  time  before  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century — 
when  nothing  would  be  left  but  a  handful  of  very  rich 
men  on  the  one  hand  and  a  level  mass  of  men  on  the 
other,  having  only  enough  food  to  keep  their  muscles 
capable  of  labor  and  only  enough  of  rags  to  save  them 
from  being  naked  or  frozen.  Then,  said  Marx,  the 
situation  will  be  no  longer  tolerable.  Then  the  knell 
of  the  capitalistic  system  will  have  sounded.  The  work- 
ers will  assert  themselves  under  pressure  of  an  irresis- 
tible impulse;  they  will  repossess  themselves  of  the  im- 
plements of  production  that  have  been  taken  from  them. 
The  expropriators  will  in  their  turn  be  expropriated,  and 
the  laborers  will  divide  amongst  themselves  for  the 
future  the  entire  product  produced  by  them. 

I  have  given  you  this  outline  of  the  theory  of  Karl 
Marx,  because,  though  a  certain  class  even  of  later  so- 
cialists themselves  have  felt  themselves  forced  to  reject 
parts  of  it  as  untenable,  it  still  remains,  so  far  as  its 
primary  doctrines  go,  the  basis  of  popular  socialism  up 
to  the  present  day.  I  mean  the  doctrine  that  all  wealth 
is  due  to  the  labor  of  the  average  majority — to  that 
ordinary  manual  exertion  which  in  all  cases  is  so 
equal  in  kind  that  an  hour  of  it  on  the  part  of  any 
one  man  is  approximately  as  efficacious  as  an  hour 
of  it  on  the  part  of  any  other.  This  doctrine  has  been, 
and  still  is,  the  basis  of  socialism  as  a  working  appeal 
to  the  majority.  It  enables  the  preachers  of  socialism 
to  say  to  the  manual  workers,  who  in  all  communities 
must  constitute  the  vast  majority  of  the  population, 
"You,  and  you  alone,  produce  all  the  wealth  of  the 
world.  Each  of  you,  hour  for  hour,  contributes  an 
equal  share  to  it;  and  each  of  you  is,  consequently, 
entitled  to  an  equal  share  of  the  dividend."  And, 
however,  since  the  days  of  Marx,  the  more  intellectual 

ii 


socialists  may  have  shifted  their  intellectual  ground, 
they  still  preach  to  the  masses  the  gospel  that  Marx 
preached  to  them.  Here,  for  example,  is  the  declara- 
tion of  Mr.  Sidney  Webb,  the  most  prominent  represen- 
tative of  thoughtful  socialism  in  England:  "The  only 
scheme  of  society  which  can  be  described  as  'truly  so- 
cialistic' is  one  which  will  secure  to  every  citizen  equal 
means  of  subsistence,  and  prevent  the  slightest  inequali- 
ties in  wealth  from  ever  again  arising." 

I  say  again,  then,  that  in  the  minds  of  the  masses  the 
attraction  of  socialism  is  its  promise  of  an  equal  dis- 
tribution of  wealth ;  and  what  makes  them  regard  such 
an  equal  distribution  as  possible  is  that  theory  of  pro- 
duction which  the  genius  of  Karl  Marx  invested  with 
a  semblance,  at  all  events,  of  sober  scientific  truth,  and 
which  ascribes  all  wealth  to  that  ordinary  manual  labor 
which  brings  the  sweat  to  the  brow  of  the  ordinary 
laboring  man. 

This  theory  of  production,  then,  being  the  basis  of 
popular  socialism.  I  propose  to  take  it  as  my  starting 
point,  and  to  examine  it,  not  now,  but  on  the  occasion 
when  I  next  address  you.  I  then  hope  to  show  you 
that,  in  spite  of  the  plausibility  with  which  the  ingenuity 
of  Marx  invested  it,  this  basic  doctrine  of  so-called 
scientific  socialism  is  the  greatest  intellectual  mare's  nest 
of  the  century  that  has  lately  ended ;  and,  not  confining 
myself  to  any  merely  negative  criticism,  I  shall  endeavor 
to  put  before  you  what  the  human  factors  in  production 
really  are.  We  shall  then  see  that  the  analysis  of  Karl 
Marx  bears  as  little  relation  to  the  actual  facts  of  the 
case  as  the  old  analysis  of  matter  into  fire,  water,  earth 
and  air  bears  to  the  actual  facts  of  chemistry  as  modern 
science  has  revealed  them  to  us. 

But  before  I  begin  this  examination,  there  are  cer- 
tain other  points  which  I  would  press  on  your  atten- 
tion, as  a  preface  to  it.  To  a  considerable  number  of 
people,  without  any  formal  examination  of  it  at  all,  this 
doctrine  that  labor  is  the  sole  producer  of  wealth  will 

12 


suggest  many  obvious  difficulties.  If  all  labor,  hour  for 
hour,  produce  commodities  of  equal  economic  value,  it 
will  occur  to  many  of  us  to  ask  how  any  enterprise  which 
sets  labor  in  motion  can  fail.  An  English  disciple  of 
Karl  Marx,  Mr.  Hyndman,  has  pushed  the  doctrine  of 
Marx  to  its  full  logical  consequences.  In  a  manual  of 
socialism  published  by  him  he  takes  the  case  of  a  man 
who  finds  himself  in  the  possession  of  fifty  thousand 
dollars,  and  says  that,  if  he  wants  to  live  permanently 
by  robbing  other  men  of  the  products  of  their  labor, 
his  course  is,  under  the  present  system,  simple.  He 
buys  a  mill  of  some  kind,  hires  a  manager  and  opera- 
tives, and  year  by  year  robs  them  of  the  surplus  values 
which  they  produce.  He  himself,  says  Mr.  Hyndman, 
with  delightful  naivete,  "has  nothing  to  do  but  sit  still 
and  watch  the  mill  go."  Does  this  conclusion  coincide 
with  the  facts  of  life?  All  practical  men  will  at  once 
dismiss  it  with  derision.  If  it  were  true,  any  one  em- 
ployment of  capital  would  be  just  as  successful  as  any 
other.  Every  enterprise  would  meet  with  equal  success 
which  found  employment  for  an  equal  amount  of  labor. 
A  ship  which  sailed  indifferently  would  be  just  as  good 
as  a  ship  which  sailed  well,  if  only  the  same  amount  of 
labor  had  been  expended  on  the  construction  of  both. 
If  two  yachts  were  built  for  a  race  between  America 
and  England,  the  trouble  of  an  actual  race  might  be 
spared.  We  could  discover  which  was  the  most  valuable 
boat  beforehand,  by  discovering  which  had  taken  the 
longest  time  to  make.  Or,  if  the  merit  of  the  crews 
were  in  question,  we  could  tell  which  was  the  most 
efficient  by  discovering  which  had  worked  itself  into  a 
state  of  the  most  violent  perspiration.  These  objec- 
tions, and  others  of  the  same  rough  and  ready  kind  will 
suggest  themselves  to  the  doctrine  that  the  wealth  repre- 
sented by  a  product  depends  on  the  amount  of  manual 
labor  that  is  embodied  in  it.  And  yet  in  spite  of  all 
this  we  are  confronted  by  a  very  curious  fact.  This  doc- 
trine with  regard  to  labor  has  been-  adopted,  and  is  con- 

13 


stantly  enunciated,  not  by  socialists  only,  or  by  persons 
of  defective  education;  but  we  find  it  explicitly  or  im- 
plicitly dominating  the  thought  of  others — of  highly- 
placed  politicians,  and  celebrated  philosophical  thinkers, 
who  look  upon  socialism  as  a  practical  programme  with 
abhorrence.  Ruskin,  for  example,  who  repudiated  all 
sympathy  with  socialism,  is  never  weary  of  declaring 
that  nothing  produces  wealth  but  labor.  Mr.  Lloyd 
George,  a  member  of  the  present  liberal  British  govern- 
ment, wrote  some  months  since  to  the  Times,  declaring 
that  he  was  no  socialist,  but  that  he  did  desire  to  see 
more  of  the  wealth  of  the  country  finding  its  way  to 
the  laboring  classes,  who  alone  produced  the  whole  of 
it.  Again,  let  us  take  Count  Tolstoy,  who,  whatever 
we  may  think  of  his  eccentricities,  is  at  all  events  a 
man  of  genius.  Count  Tolstoy  begins  one  of  his  recent 
publications  thus :  "There  are  a  thousand  millions  of 
laboring  men  in  the  world.  All  the  bread,  all  the  goods 
of  the  whole  world,  all  wherewith  people  live  and  are 
rich — all  this  is  produced  by  these  laboring  men."  And 
if  we  wish  to  be  perfectly  certain  what  Count  Tolstoy 
means  by  laborers,  he  tells  us  that  there  is  one  sure 
test.  Are  the  palms  of  their  hands  hardened  by  manual 
toil? 

Seeing,  then,  how  many  are  the  objections  which  or- 
dinary common  sense  suggests  to  the  doctrine  that  all 
wealth  is  produced  solely,  and  measured  solely  by 
labor,  we  are  naturally  led  to  ask  how  it  is  that  so 
many  eminent  men  can  still  accept  and  enunciate  this 
doctrine  as  an  axiom.  Why,  if  it  is  really  so  absurd  as, 
from  some  of  its  consequences,  it  would  seem  to  be, 
has  it  not  been  formally  so  exposed  and  exploded  that 
no  serious  thinker  can  any  longer  give  harbor  to  it? 
To  this  question  there  are  several  answers  which  I 
shall  point  out  hereafter;  but  there  is  one,  and  per- 
haps the  most  important  one,  to  which  I  must  call  your 
attention  now.  This  consists  in  the  fact  that  the  doc- 
trine in  question  is  embodied,  and  is  every  day  repeated, 

14 


in  the  language  of  what  is  called  the  orthodox  science  of 
economics ;  and  the  teaching  of  the  orthodox  economists 
has,  in  this  special  respect,  never  been  rendered  definitely 
obsolete  by  any  definite,  authoritative  and  popularly 
accepted  correction  of  it.  It  was  the  boast  of  Karl 
Marx  that  all  his  most  revolutionary  conclusions,  which 
threatened  the  whole  system  of  capitalism,  was  de- 
duced from  the  doctrines  of  thinkers  who  regarded  that 
system  as  unalterable,  and  who,  so  far  as  intentions 
went,  were  its  chief  intellectual  supporters.  And  in 
this  Marx  was  absolutely  right.  Let  me  show  you  in 
detail  how. 

Let  us  open  any  text-book  of  orthodox  economics  we 
please,  and  what  will  it  tell  us  as  to  the  agencies  by 
which  wealth  is  produced?  It  will  tell  us  that  these 
agencies  are  three — land,  capital  and  labor.  Now  by 
land  is  meant  all  the  forces  and  spontaneous  gifts  of 
nature.  As  to  these  there  is  no  dispute.  Dispute  arises 
only  in  connection  with  the  agencies  supplied  by  man. 
Of  these  capital  is  one ;  but  capital,  whatever  may  be 
its  nature,  represents  human  agencies  that  are  past,  not 
agencies  that  are  actually  operating  in  the  present;  and 
would  be  absolutely  sterile  unless  living  human  effort 
made  use  of  it.  It  is  therefore  on  the  nature  of  the 
living  industrial  effort  involved  in  the  production  of 
wealth  that  the  whole  discussion  turns ;  and  this  living 
industrial  effort  is,  by  the  orthodox  economists,  com- 
prised under  the  single  name,  and  the  single  category 
of  labor. 

Now  nobody  must  think  that  I  am  going  to  follow  the 
example  of  Ruskin  and  Carlyle,  and  other  distinguished 
writers,  and  attack  the  science  of  the  orthodox  econom- 
ists as  a  no-science,  whose  conclusions — to  quote 
Ruskin's  language,  are  practically  valueless  and  nugatory. 
My  sole  contention  is  that  this  science  is  incomplete, 
and  that  instead  of  denying  itself  it  must  complete 
itself;  and  that  the  point  at  which  its  extension  must 
begin  is  this  point  which  we  are  now  considering — 

15 


namely,  its  present  comprehension  of  all  the  varieties 
of  living  industrial  effort  under  the  common  name  and 
common  idea  of  labor.  All  varieties  of  such  effort 
have  doubtless  certain  features  in  common,  and  for 
certain  purposes  it  is  sufficient  to  group  them  all  to- 
gether. Thus  chemistry  assumed  at  one  time  that  atoms 
were  the  ultimate  particles  of  matter;  and  for  the  solu- 
tion of  certain  problems  this  assumption  sufficed  and 
suffices  still.  But  new  problems  have  dawned  on  the 
scientific  world,  and  chemistry,  in  order  to  solve  them, 
has  to  push  its  analysis  farther,  and  has  now  reduced 
atoms  to  aggregates  of  minuter  elements.  Similarly, 
political  economy  is  asked  to  solve  problems  now  which, 
in  the  days  of  Adam  Smith  and  Ricardo,  had  never  so 
much  as  been  mooted  in  any  definite  and  coherent  way. 
When  the  orthodox  economists  declared  that  labor  was 
the  only  living  human  agency  involved  in  the  production 
of  wealth,  and  that  the  value  of  commodities  were 
measured  by  the  amount  of  labor  embodied  in  them,  no 
one  had  thought  of  isolating  the  labor  of  the  average 
man,  of  contrasting  it  with  other  effort  of  a  more  ex- 
ceptional kind,  and  claiming  for  the  former  that  it 
alone  was  productive;  or  that  all  effort,  hour  for  hour, 
was  of  equal  productive  value.  These  economists  in- 
deed admitted  from  time  to  time  that  the  labor  of  some 
men  produced  much  more  than  that  of  others.  Thus 
Mill  refers  to  the  productive  power  of  mere  thought. 
But,  having  paid  these  casual  tributes  to  common  sense, 
they  made  no  attempt  to  give  their  admissions  any 
definite  form,  or  provide  for  them  in  their  system  any 
definite  form,  or  provide  for  them  in  their  system 
any  definite  place.  They  were  content,  since  in  their 
day,  no  practical  issue  was  involved,  to  leave  all  forms 
of  living  industrial  effort,  from  those  of  a  Watt  or  an 
Edison  down  to  those  of  a  man  who  tars  a  fence, 
grouped  together  under  the  common  name  of  labor. 

But  if  this  crude  analysis  was  sufficient  for  yester- 
day, it  is  quite  insufficient  for  to-day.    If  labor  be  taken 

16 


to  include  industrial  effort  of  all  kinds,  to  say  that 
labor  is  the  source  of  all  wealth  is  a  platitude;  and  to 
say  that  all  wealth  ought  to  go  to  the  laborers  is  like 
saying  that  all  wealth  ought  to  go  to  the  human  race. 
We  have  no  foundation  here  for  any  of  the  distinctive 
doctrines  of  socialism.  Socialism  becomes  a  definite 
and  distinctive  doctrine  only  when  the  word  labor  is 
taken  in  an  exclusive  sense  and  stands  exclusively  for 
those  ordinary  manual  efforts  by  which,  as  Count  Tol- 
stoy says,  the  palms  of  the  hands  are  hardened ;  all  other 
forms  of  effort,  and  the  claims  based  on  them,  being 
ignored.  So  soon  as  labor  becomes  definitely  under- 
stood in  this  sense,  and  is  in  this  sense  appropriated  by 
socialism  as  a  militant  school  of  thought,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  argue  with  them,  and  ask  whether  their  theory 
be  true  or  false,  so  long  as  we  persist  in  using  the  same 
name,  and  considering  under  the  same  category  the  kind 
of  effort  which  the  socialists  mean  by  the  word,  and 
which  they  recognize,  and  those  other  kinds  of  effort 
which  they  definitely  ignore  and  exclude.  The  truth 
of  the  matter  is,  as  I  shall  point  out  when  I  next  ad- 
dress you,  that  the  varieties  of  human  effort  involved  in! 
the  production  of  modern  wealth  are  not  one,  but  two; 
and  that  these  differ  not  only  in  degree  of  productivity, 
but  in  kind — in  the  very  nature  of  their  operation ;  and 
that  economists  who  attempt  to  explain  the  production 
of  wealth  to-day,  whilst  giving  a  single  name  to  two 
different  kinds  of  effort,  are  like  a  man  who  insists  on 
putting  his  hands  into  boxing-gloves  as  a  preparation 
for  taking  to  pieces  the  delicate  works  of  a  chronometer. 
The  first  thing,  then,  for  us  to  do,  under  the  pressure 
of  novel  circumstances,  is  to  take  up  the  problem 
where  the  orthodox  economists  leave  it — to  go  on  where 
they  leave  off.  It  is  to  take  this  mass  of  unanalyzed 
industrial  effort  which  is  involved  in  the  production 
of  wealth  in  modern  civilized  communities  and  see  of 
what  different  kinds  of  effort  the  great  total  con- 

17 


1 


sists,  and  how  one  kind  is  connected  and  co-operates 
with  the  other. 

This  question — the  question  of  how  wealth  is  pro- 
duced— is  the  first  question,  in  point  of  logic,  with 
which  it  is  necessary  to  deal,  in  considering  the  social- 
istic theory  as  to  the  manner  in  which  it  ought  to  be 
distributed.  It  should  also  be  dealt  with  first  as  a 
mere  matter  of  argumentative  tactics,  for  in  this  way 
the  question  on  which  we  first  enter  is  a  question  not 
of  what  ought  to  be,  but  of  what  is.  It  does  not  in- 
volve us  in  any  dispute  with  socialists  as  to  who  ought 
to  get,  and  who  ought  not  to  get,  such  and  so  much 
of  such  and  such  of  the  world's  goods.  We  have  merely 
a  question  of  what  are  the  different  kinds  of  human 
action  and  faculties  which  are  actually .  involved  in  the 
bringing  of  these  goods  into  existence. 

This,  then,  is  the  question  which  we  may  call  the 
statics  of  production,  with  regard  to  which  I  hope  at 
our  next  meeting  to  address  you.  At  present  the 
orthodox  economists  and  the  socialistic  economists 
alike  give  us  all  human  effort  tied  up,  as  it  were,  in  a 
sack,  and  ticketed  "human  labor."  I  propose  to  open 
the  sack,  to  spread  out  its  contents  before  you,  and 
ask  you  to  examine  them  with  your  own  eyes;  and 
the  result  will  be  to  exhibit  not  labor  only,  but  capital 
also,  and  the  forces  which  capital  represents,  in  a  light 
very  different  from  that  in  which  they  at  present  ap- 
pear to  the  prophets  and  apostles  of  socialism,  and  to 
the  multitudes  who,  more  or  less  vaguely,  are  allowing 
themselves  to  be  influenced  by  their  theories. 


18 


LECTURE  II. 


I  pointed  out  last  Tuesday  that  when  we  speak  of 
Socialism,  its  rise,  its  spread,  and  so  forth,  we  are 
not  speaking  of  any  realized  system;  but  merely  of 
a  belief  or  theory  that  such  a  system  is  possible,  and 
a  consequent  demand  that  it  should  be  established. 
I  pointed  out  also  that  the  main  promise  of  socialism — 
namely  that  all  wealth  should  be  distributed  with 
substantial  equality  amongst  the  manual  laborers, 
rested  on  a  theory  with  regard  to  the  human  agencies  , 
by  which  the  wealth  in  question  is  produced — this 
theory  being  that  the  only  human  agency  involved  is 
average  manual  labor,  in  respect  of  which  one  man 
is  practically  so  equal  to  another  that  the  amount 
of  wealth  produced  by  him  is  measurable  by  the  hours 
for  which  he  labors.  I  propose  to-day,  taking  this 
theory  for  a  text,  to  inquire  how  far  it  is  an  adequate 
explanation  of  the  facts.  We  shall  find  that,  whilst 
it  is  adequate,  if  applied  to  societies  in  a  very  low 
state  of  development,  it  progressively  fails  to  be  ade- 
quate, and  becomes  more  and  more  ridiculous,  in 
proportion  as  the  societies  in  question  rise  in  the 
scale  of  civilization,  and  the  amount  of  wealth  which 
the  socialists  desire  to  redistribute  increases. 

To  begin,  then — the  doctrine  that  labor  is  the  sole 
producer  of  wealth  is  at  all  events  so  far  true  that 
no  wealth  could  be  produced  without  it.  Moreover, 
we  can  find  many  examples,  not  in  primitive  societies 
only,  but  amongst  certain  populations  still  existing  in 
the  countries  of  the  modern  world,  in  which  practi- 
cally it  operates  alone. 

By  .turning  to  examples  of  these,  we  can  see  what 
manual  labor,  taken  by  itself,  produces.  Such  exam- 

19 


pies  are  furnished  us  in  abundance  by  the  lowest  sav- 
ages, who  work  without  co-operation,  and  who  just 
manage  to  produce  a  bare  minimum  of  subsistence. 
But  even  such  savages  use  certain  rude  implements 
which  may  be  called  the  germ  of  what  economists  call 
fixed  capital ;  and  these  implements,  which  are  such 
as  can  be  made  by  anybody,  may  be  rightly,  in  the 
language  of  Marx,  called  ordinary  labor  fossilized, 
But  we  need  not  go  back  to  savages  to  find  examples 
of  populations  amongst  which  ordinary  labor  is  the 
sole  productive  agent.  There  still  exist,  in  civilized 
countries,  peasant  families  who  own  their  land  and 
till  it,  who  build  their  own  houses  and  weave  their 
own  clothes,  without  any  aid  or  guidance  except  their 
own. 

Now  what  kind,  and  what  amount  of  wealth,  do 
populations  such  as  these  produce?  Let  me  read  you 
a  few  passages  descriptive  of  a  population  of  this 
kind,  which  are  taken  from  a  very  celebrated  book. 
"They  labor  busily,  early  and  late.  They  carry  their 
manure  to  their  lands  whilst  the  frost  is  still  on  them. 
They  earn  their  firewood  with  a  labor  so  intense  that 
the  common  English  people  would  be  astonished.  They 
plod  on  from  day  .to  day,  and  from  year  to  year,  the 
most  untirable  of  human  animals."  You  might  think 
that  this  was  a  description  by  some  indignant  social- 
ist of  the  misery  of  labor  when  enslaved  by  capital. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  a  description  by  a  German 
writer,  which  John  Stuart  Mill  quotes  in  his  treatise 
on  Political  Economy,  as  illustrating  the  admirable 
position  of  German  peasant  proprietors,  who  own  their 
land,  and  the  instruments  of  production  which  they 
use,  and  have  no  masters  except  themselves.  And 
what  reward  do  these  men  gain  by  their  labor?  These 
untirable  animals  gain,  according  to  their  German 
eulogist,  just  enough  to  keep  themselves  above  the 
level  of  actual  want.  And  both  this  author  and  Mill 
hold  them  up  to  our  inspection,  not  as  victims  of  op- 

20 


pression,  but  as  shining  examples  of  the  magic  effects 
of  ownership  in  intensifying  human  labor. 

And  now  let  us  compare  the  wealth  which  is  pro- 
duced under  these  conditions  with  the  wealth  produced 
under  the  system  which  the  socialists  denounce  as 
Capitalism.  The  contrast  between  the  two  amounts  is 
emphasized  by  nobody  more  strongly  than  it  is  by  the 
socialists  themselves.  A  given  population  under  mod- 
ern conditions  will,  to  say  nothing  of  the  earlier  stages 
of  society,  produce  two,  three,  four,  or  five  times  the 
amount  of  wealth  that  a  similar  population  produced 
even  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  This  is,  indeed, 
one  of  the  practical  reasons  why  the  socialists  demand 
that  this  huge  output  should  be  redivided. 

The  great  question,  then,  which  is  inevitably  forced 
upon  us  is,  to  what  cause  is  this  astonishing  change 
clue?  If,  as  the  socialists  say,  the  only  agency  in  the 
production  of  wealth  is  ordinary  manual  labor,  why 
do  a  thousand  laborers  working  in  the  year  1907  pro- 
duce so  incomparably  more  than  they  produced  work- 
ing in  the  year  1760? 

The  socialists  answer  that  knowledge  has  increased, 
that  the  methods  of  production  have  improved,  and 
that  average  labor  has  thus  become  indefinitely  more 
productive.  But  to  say  this  is  only  begging  the  ques- 
tion. To  what  are  this  increase  of  knowledge,  and  these 
improvements  of  method  due?  Are  they  due  to  av- 
erage manual  labor  itself?  Are  they  due  to  manual 
labor  in  any  sense?  This  is  a  question  which  has 
suggested  itself  to  many  thinkers  who  start  with  the 
doctrine  that  labor  is  the  sole  human  agency  by  which 
wealth  is  produced;  and  two  classes  of  answers  have 
been  offered,  which  I  will  give  as  set  forth  by  two 
distinguished  thinkers. 

Ruskin  explains  the  advance  of  labor  from  its  lowest 
to  its  highest  efficiencies  by  the  gradual  development 
of  skill ;  and  his  definition  of  skill  is  admirable.  All 
labor,  even  the  lowest,  requires,  he  said,  a  mind  of 

21 


some  kind  to  direct  the  operation  of  the  muscles;  and 
amongst  the  majority  of  mankind,  minds  like  hands 
and  muscles  approximate  to  a  normal  standard ;  but 
amongst  a  considerable  minority  we  find  that  the  men- 
tal faculties  rise  above  this  standard  to  a  great  va- 
riety of  degrees,  which  the  manual  faculties  do  not 
and  thus  impart  to  the  manual  faculties  an  efficiency 
not  their  own.  Exceptional  quickness  of  mind,  he  says, 
will  enable  one  bricklayer  to  lay  in  a  given  time  more 
bricks  than  another;  and  similarly  mental  qualities  of 
a  kind  higher  and  rarer  will  enable  the  hands  of  a 
Michael  Angelo  to  paint  his  picture  of  the  "Last  Judg- 
ment," whilst  the  hands  of  another  man  can  only 
whitewash  a.  fence.  Skill,  in  fact,  is  some  exceptional 
mental  quality  applied  by  its  possessor  to  the  labor 
of  his  own  hands.  It  belongs  to  him  personally;  and 
is,  as  Ruskin  rightly  says,  incommunicable. 

Now  in  skill  as  thus  defined  we  have  no  doubt  a 
correct  explanation  of  how  labor  in  some  cases  pro- 
duces products  whose  value  is  great,  whilst  in  others 
it  produces  products  whose  value  is  relatively  infinitesi- 
mal. But  these  products  whose  value  is  due  to  ex- 
ceptional skill,  though  they  form  a  portion  of  the  wealth 
of  the  modern  world,  are  not  typical  of  it.  The  pro- 
ducts due  to  exceptional  skill  or  craftsmanship— such 
as  an  illuminated  missal  for  example — are  always  few 
in  number,  and  can  be  possessed  by  the  few  only,  and 
from  the  nature  of  the  case  are  costly.  The  distinctive 
feature  of  modern  wealth-production,  on  the  contrary, 
is  the  multiplication  of  goods  relatively  to  the  time 
spent  in  producing  them,  and  the  consequent  cheapen- 
ing of  each  article  individually.  Skill,  therefore,  af- 
fords us  no  explanation  of  how  manual  labor  as  a 
whole  can  ever  become  more  productive  in  one  period 
than  it  is  in  another. 

The  second  answer  which  I  have  referred  to,  is 
far  more  to  the  point.  It  is  ithat  given  in  a  classical 
passage  by  Adam  Smith,  which  forms  ithe  opening  of 

22 


his  great  work,  "The  Wealth  of  Nations."  The  chief 
cause,  he  says,  which  in  all  progressive  communities 
enhances  the  productive  power  of  the  individual  laborer, 
is  not  the  development  amongst  some  of  faculties  that 
are  above  the  average,  but  a  more  effective  development 
of  powers  common  to  all,  by  the  fact  that  labor  is 
divided,  so  that  a  man  by  devoting  his  life  to  the  per- 
formance of  one  operation  acquires  a  manual  dexterity 
otherwise  beyond  his  reach.  Here  we  have  labor  di- 
vided in  its  application,  but  not  requiring  different 
degrees  of  capacity.  We  have  the  average  labor  of  the 
average  man  still. 

But  this  simple  division  of  labor,  though  a  true 
explanation  so  far  as  it  goes,  takes  us  but  a  very 
little  way  in  the  history  of  industrial  progress.  It 
does  not,  indeed,  explain  all  progress  up  to  the  time 
of  Adam  Smith;  and  the  modern  industrial  system, 
when  Adam  Smith  wrote  in  the  middle  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  was,  as  Karl  Marx  insists,  only  just 
beginning.  The  world's  great  increase  in  productivity 
has  been  all  made  since  that  time.  Even  then  two 
factors  were  at  work,  other  than  the  division  of  labor, 
which  have  ever  since  been  growing  in  importance 
and  magnitude ;  and  the  secret  of  modern  production 
resides,  we  shall  find,  in  these.  One  of  these  is  the 
development  of  machinery.  The  other  is  the  increas- 
ing application  of  exceptional  intelligence,  knowledge, 
and  energy,  not  to  the  manual  labor  of  those  who 
possess  these  exceptional  qualifications,  but  to  the  di- 
rection and  co-ordination  of  the  variety  of  individual 
operations  into  which  the  manual  labor  of  others,  on 
an  increasing  scale,  divides  itself.  It  is  to  this  latter 
factor  that  the  development  of  modern  machinery  is 
itself  due.  I  will  speak  about  this  first. 

The  economic,  functions  of  a  man's  intelligence  and 
knowledge,  as  directing  the  labor,  not  of  his  own 
hands,  but  of  the  hands  of  others,  finds  perhaps  the 
simplest  illustration  in  the  case  of  a  printed  book.  Let 

23 


us  take  an  edition  of  ten  thousand  copies  of  any  book 
we  please,  printed  well,  and  on  good  paper.  The  la- 
bor of  the  printers  and  the  paper-makers  is  the  same 
in  kind  and  quality,  whether  the  book  be  a  work  of 
genius,  or  a  mere  compilation  of  unreadable  nonsense — 
whether  thousands  of  people  want  to  read  it,  or  no- 
body— whether  each  copy  is  an  article  of  wealth,  or 
whether  it  is  so  much  rubbish.  What  makes  the  edition 
valuable,  when  it  is  so,  is  the  directions  under  which 
the  printers  work ;  but  the  directions  do  not  come 
from  die  man  by  whose  manual  dexterity  the  types  are 
arranged  in  a  given  order,  and  the  words  impressed 
on  so  many  reams  of  paper.  They  come  from  the 
author  conveying  them  to  the  compositors  by  means 
of  his  manuscript.  This  manuscript,  considered  under 
its  industrial  aspect,  is  a  series  of  minute  orders,  every 
one  of  which  modifies  firstly  the  movements  of  the 
compositors  hands,  and  secondly  the  results  of  every 
impress  of  the  type  on  paper;  one  mind  thus  imparting 
the  quality  of  wealth  or  value  to  every  one  of  the  ten 
thousand  copies  simultaneously. 

Similarly,  when  any  great  mass  of  modern  machinery 
is  constructed,  which  involves  the  co-operation  of  thou- 
sands of  manual  laborers,  the  same  situation  repeats 
itself.  The  machinery  is  an  agent  of  production,  and 
increases  the  world's  wealth,  not  because  the  parts  are 
made  with  sufficient  manual  skill — for  the  highest  skill 
may  be  employed  in  the  production  of  mechanisms  that 
are  futile — but  because  each  of  its  parts  is  fashioned  in 
accordance  with  the  orders  of  some  master  mind, 
which  directs  and  co-ordinates  each  minutest  movement 
made  by  the  arms  and  hands  of  every  one  of  the 
manual  laborers. 

And  with  the  direction  of  labor  generally,  whether  in 
the  production  of  manufacturing  machinery,  or  the  use 
of  this  machinery  in  the  production  of  such  and  such 
kinds  of  goods,  from  books  down  to  ribbons  and  neck- 
ties of  such  and  such  a  price  and  color,  the  case  is  the 

24 


same  again.  We --have  mati'ual  labor  of  a  given  kind 
and  quality,  which  assists  in  producing  what  is  wanted 
or  is  not  wanted — which  constitute  wealth  or  merely  a 
pile  of  refuse — according  to  the  manner  in  which  all 
this  labor  is  directed  by  faculties  specifically  different 
from  those  involved  in  the  manual  labor  itself. 

Nothing  can  bring  out  the  nature  of  this  difference 
more  brilliantly  than  Ruskin's  definition,  which  I  have 
just  now  quoted,  of  skill.  Labor  rises  in  quality,  says 
Ruskin,  and  acquires  the  character  of  skill,  in  propor- 
tion as  the  mind  of  the  laborer  himself,  directing  his 
own  hands,  evinces  qualities  which  rise  above  the  nor- 
mal minimum ;  and  these  qualities,  as  Ruskin  says,  are 
incommunicable.  Their  action  ends  with  the  task  on 
which  the  man  possessing  them  is  engaged.  Skill,  in 
short,  is  the  mind  of  one  man  affecting  his  own  labor. 
The  directive  faculty  is  the  mind  of  one  man  simul- 
taneously affecting  the  labor  of  any  number  of  others. 
It  is  to  this  direction  of  labor,  on  the  part  of  excep- 
tional men,  and  not  to  labor  itself,  that  all  the  aug- 
mented wealth  of  the  modern  world  is  due.  The 
progress  of  modern  wealth-production  consists  vitally 
and  fundamentally  in  an  increasing  concentration  of  the 
most  active  and  powerful  minds  on  the  direction  of 
manual  effort,  which  is  without  a  parallel  in  the  past 
history  of  the  world. 

The  human  faculties,  then,  which  are  involved  in  the 
production  of  modern  wealth  are  not,  as  the  orthodox 
economists  persist  in  saying,  and  as  the  socialists  who 
follow  Marx  say,  of  one  kind — namely  those  embodied 
in  the  individual  task-work  of  the  average  individual, 
or,  as  it  is  called,  labor.  They  are  of  two  kinds ;  and 
it  is  impossible  to  reason  intelligibly  about  the  pro- 
ductive process  so  long  as  we  persist  in  calling  both 
by  the  same  name.  We  might  as  well  call  the  French  / 
and  the  Germans  by  the  common  name  of  soldiers,  and  i 
then  try  to  write  an  intelligible  history  of  the  Franco- 
Prussian  war. 

25 


For  these  directive  faculties,  so  essentially  distinct 
from  labor,  it  is  difficult  to  find  an  entirely  satisfactory 
name.  In  default  of  a  better  I  have,  on  former  occa- 
sions, applied  to  them  the  name  of  Ability  and  this  will 
serve  our  purpose  now — especially  as  the  name  of 
Ability  has,  of  late  years,  been  accepted  by  many  of  the 
more  thoughtful  socialists  themselves  as  representing 
certain  talents  which,  though  they  have  never  properly 
analyzed  them,  they  are  beginning  to  recognize  as  dif- 
ferent from  ordinary  labor. 

And  now  having  come  thus  far — now  that  we  have 
seen  that  modern  wealth  is  due  not  to  labor  alone,  but 
also  to  the  action  of  the  Ability  by  which  labor  is 
directed,  a  new  question  arises,  which  will  carry  us 
onward  from  the  consideration  of  labor  to  the  con- 
sideration of  capital.  The  question  to  which  I  refer  is 
the  question  of  the  practical  means  by  which  the  con- 
trol of  Ability  over  average  labor  is  exercised;  and  it 
is  in  a  consideration  of  the  nature  of  capital  that  we 
shall  find  the  answer.  Here  again  we  shall  find  that 
the  orthodox  economists  are  defective,  and  that  their 
analysis  of  capital  is  just  as  incomplete  as  their  analysis 
of  human  effort. 

Capital  is  divided  traditionally  into  two  kinds,  fixed, 
and  circulating.  By  fixed  capital  is  meant  machinery; 
by  circulating  capital  is  meant,  as  Adam  Smith  says, 
the  stock  of  consumable  commodities  which  the  manu- 
facturer produces,  or  which  the  storekeeper  or  the 
merchant  buys,  in  order  to  sell  them  at  a  profit,  where- 
upon they  are  replaced  by  new  ones.  Now  fixed  capital, 
or  the  machinery  of  the  modern  world,  is  itself  the 
result  of  Ability  directing  labor.  It  offers  us  no  clue 
to  the  means  by  which  the  direction  is  accomplished. 
Nor  does  circulating  capital,  as  Adam  Smith  under- 
stands it,  throw  any  more  light  upon  the  subject.  The 
capital  which  concerns  us  here  is  capital  of  a  third 
kind,  which  resembles  circulating  capital,  or  stocks  of 
goods  sold  to  the  public  customer,  in  some  ways;  but 

26 


in  one  way  is  essentially  different.  It  consists  of  goods 
which  are  the  general  necessaries  of  life ;  but  instead 
of  being  sold  to  the  outside  public  at  a  profit,  they  are 
virtually  distributed  by  the  manufacturer  to  a  special 
group  of  laborers  on  conditions. 

So  long  as  labor  is  undivided,  or  divided  only  in  such 
a  rudimentary  way  that  each  family  can  practically 
supply  all  its  own  wants,  the  necessaries  of  life  come 
to  the  laborer  directly.  The  kind  of  capital  with  which 
we  are  here  concerned,  and  which  we  may  call  wage- 
capital,  makes  its  first  appearance  when  the  division  of 
labor  so  advances  that  each  laborer  or  laboring  family 
makes  only  one  of  the  dozen  commodities  which  it  re- 
quires to  support  existence.  Under  these  conditions, 
the  products  of  labor,  which  enable  the  laborer  to  live, 
no  longer  come  to  any  one  laborer  directly.  They  have 
to  come  to  him  in  the  form  of  assorted  commodities, 
which  are  portions  of  the  direct  products  of  a  variety 
of  other  laborers.  His  own  products  must  pass  out  of 
his  own  hands,  and  come  back  to  him  in  the  form  of 
equivalents,  through  the  hands  of  some  distributor. 
For  this  distributor,  who  at  first  is  no  more  than  a 
merchant,  the  commodities  which  thus  pass  through  his 
hands  are  circulating  capital  in  the  exact  sense  which 
Adam  Smith  gives  to  the  phrase;  but  they  are  not 
wage-capital.  They  become  wage-capital  only  when  the 
distributor,  instead  of  merely  exchanging  them,  begins 
to  turn  his  attention  to  the  manner  in  which  they  are 
produced.  So  long  as  he  is  merely  a  merchant,  he 
says  to  the  producer  of  so  many  yards  of  cloth,  "I 
will  give  you  so  many  boots,  or  stockings,  or  so  much 
tea  or  sugar,  in  exchange  for  them."  But  when  he 
turns  his  attention  from  the  exchange  to  the  actual 
process  of  production,  what  he  says  to  the  cloth-maker 
is  this,  "I  will  give  you  an  even  larger  measure  of  the 
various  commodities  which  you  require,  on  condition 
that  you  produce  your  cloth  in  a  manner  which  I  my- 
selt  will  prescribe  to  you." 

27 


Here  we  see,  in  its  essence,  the  function  of  wage- 
capital.  The  possession  of  it  means  the  control  by  one 
man  of  the  necessaries  required  by  many;  and  it  en- 
ables such  a  man  by  thus  making  the  distribution  of 
these  necessaries  conditional,  to  impose  the  industrial 
guidance  of  his  own  knowledge  and  intellect  on  the 
manual  operations  of  those  amongst  whom  he  distri- 
butes them. 

And  here  we  see  that  Marx  was  at  once  right  and 
wrong,  when  he  said  that  the  essence  of  modern  capital- 
ism   was    monopoly.      It    is    a    monopoly — a    monopoly 
which  enables  the  few  to  impose  their  own  directions 
on   the  manual   activities   of  the   many;   but   it   is   not 
primarily,  as  Marx  thought,  a  passive  monopoly  of  the 
modern    implements   of  production,    which    only   arises 
from  it  as  a  consequence.     It  is  primarily  a  monopoly 
of  the  products  which  are  essential  to  daily  life.     We 
can    see    that    this    is    so    by    turning    to    the    account 
which      Marx     gives     of     the     historical     beginnings 
of    capitalism    about    the    beginning    of    the    fifteenth 
century,    when    the    implements    of    production    began, 
he   says,    to    fall   into   the  hands   of   the   few.     If,    for 
instance,    to    take    one    trade — that    of    weaving — capi- 
talism   means    nothing    but    the    mere    act    of    acquisi- 
tion, the  capitalists  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII  would 
have  got  into  their  possession  nothing  but  a  number 
of  the  hand-looms  then  in  use;  they  would  have  im- 
posed  their   own  terms   on  those  who   desired   to   use 
them;    and   there   the    matter    would    have    ended.      If 
capitalism  meant  no  more  than  this  the  looms  of  to-day 
would  be  the  looms  of  four  hundred  years  ago.     The 
passive  ownership  of  machines  does  nothing  to  improve 
their  construction.    But  the  salient  feature  of  production 
since  the  rise  of  the  capitalistic  system  has  been  the 
fact    that    since    then    the    means    of    production    have 
been  revolutionized — that  the  old  looms,  in  proportion 
as  they  have  been  monopolized,  have  disappeared,  and 
their  place  has  been  taken  by  others,  whose  efficiency, 

28 


as  compared  with  theirs,  is  that  of  monstrous  Titans  as 
compared  with  the  efficiency  of  pigmies.  The  monopol- 
ists, in  short,  in  the  weaving  industry,  have  not  said 
to  the  laborers,  "You  shall  either  give  us  most  of  the 
cloth  you  weave,  or  you  shall  not  have  access  to  the 
hand-looms  with  which  you  weave  it."  They  have 
said,  "You  shall  weave  no  cloth  unless,  under  our  direc- 
tions, you  first  construct  looms  of  a  type  as  yet  un- 
known to  you,  which  will  enable  you  to  weave  fifty 
yards  in  the  time  which  it  now  takes  you  to  weave 
only  one." 

Modern  capital,  I  repeat,  is  primarily  wage-capitaV  - 
such  capital  as  machinery  being  the  direct  result  of 
its  application;  and  wage-capital  is  productive  not  in 
virtue  of  any  quality  inherent  in  itself,  but  because  it  is 
the  reins  by  which  the  exceptional  ability  of  the  few 
guides  the  labor,  skilled  or  unskilled,  of  the  many. 
And  here,  to  show  you  how  imperfectly  this  fact  has 
beer  apprehended  by  the  orthodox  economists,  I  may 
mention  that  some  of  them,  groping  after  the  truth, 
have  proposed  to  take  cognizance  of  talent  under  the 
name  of  personal  capital.  This  is  an  attempt  to  express 
the  truth,  but  it  is  an  attempt  which  merely  confuses 
it.  To  speak  of  Ability  as  personal  capital  is  neither 
more  nor  less  than  to  identify  the  coachman  with  the  ^ 
reins;  the  fact  being  that  the  latter  are  useful  or  use- 
less only  in  accordance  with  the  manner  in  which  the 
coachman  handles  them. 

The  enormous  augmentation  of  wealth,  then,   which^.v 
is  characteristic  of  modern  times,  is  not  due  to  average  • 
labor,  though  average  labor  is  essential  to  it.    It  is  due, 
in  its  distinctive  magnitude,  to  the  increasing  concen- 
tration of  intellect,  knowledge,  and  other  rare  mental 
faculties,  on  the  process  of  directing  this  labor  in  an 
increasingly    efficacious    way;    and    capitalism   is    prim- 
arily the  means  by  which  this  direction  is  effected.     No 
intelligent  socialist,  when  the  matter  is  thus  put  plainly, 
can  possibly  deny  this.     Let  anyone  consider,   for  ex- 

29 


ample,  one  of  the  great  steel  bridges  which  now  cast 
their  single  spans  over  enormous  estuaries  of  water. 
These  structures  are  fossil  labor,  doubtless;  but  they 
are,  in  their  distinctive  features,  not  fossil  labor  as 
such.  They  are  fossil  science,  fossil  chemistry,  fossil 
mathematics,  fossil  mechanics — in  short,  fossil  knowl- 
edge and  intellect  of  a  degree  and  kind  which  we  shall 
not  find  existing  in  one  mind  out  of  a  thousand ;  and 
labor  conduces  to  the  production  of  these  structures 
only  because  it  submits  itself  to  the  guidance  of  these 
intellectual  leaders.  And  now  let  me  call  your  attention 
to  this  point.  Although  the  condition  of  things  is 
obviously  what  I  have  just  described,  we  have  here 
the  precise  condition  of  .things  against  which  socialism, 
as  a  popular  creed,  protests.  Concurrently  with  their 
demands  for  a  larger  share  in  the  world's  products,  the 
socialists  demand  a  radical  change  in  the  whole  organi- 
zation of  production.  They  demand  what  they  call  the 
emancipation  of  labor ;  and  by  the  emancipation  of 
labor  they  mean  emancipation  from  what  they  have 
been  taught  to  call  wagedom.  What  this  cry  means 
we  are  now  able  to  see  clearly.  It  means,  if  it  means 
anything,  the  emancipation  of  the  average  mind  from  the 
guidance  of  any  mind  that  is  in  any  way  superior 
to  itself,  or  is  able  to  enhance  the  productivity  of  an 
average  pair  of  hands. 

Such  being  the  case,  the  curious  thing  is  this — that 
these  very  socialists,  who  are  so  loud  in  demanding 
that  labor  should  be  thus  emancipated,  show  us,  when- 
ever they  are  asked  for  any  constructive  policy,  that 
they  too  admit  the  necessity  of  direction  and  control 
themselves.  They  do  not  propose  that  men  shall  re- 
lapse into  the  primitive  condition  in  which  each  man 
works  with  his  hands,  as  best  he  can,  in  isolation.  If 
they  are  asked  for  an  illustration  of  the  kind  of  system 
which  they  would  introduce  if  they  got  their  way,  they 
invariably  refer  us  to  a  State  institution  like  the  post- 
office.  The  intellectual  simplicity  of  the  men  who  argue 

30    ./ 


thus  is  astonishing.  If  all  production  were  Organized 
like  a  State  post-office,  there  would,  it  is  true,  be  no 
private  capitalist ;  but  would  the  laborer  have  achieved 
the  economic  freedom,  the  emancipation,  which  socialists 
at  present  take  so  much  pleasure  in  talking  about?  The 
laborers  would,  on  the  contrary,  be  unfree  and  un- 
emancipated  in  precisely  the  same  sense  in  which  they 
are  unfree  and  unemancipated  now;  and  to  an  even 
greater  degree.  Let  us  take  the  case  of  a  postman,  or 
a  sorter  in  the  State  post-office.  Each  of  these  has  his 
special  task  allotted  to  him,  which  he  is  bound  to  per- 
form. The  most  ardent  socialist  in  the  world  would 
very  soon  join  in  denouncing  the  principles  of  economic 
emancipation  if  a  postman,  who  happened  not  to  ap- 
prove of  socialism,  threw  the  socialists'  letters  into  the 
river  instead  of  putting  them  into  his  letter-box.  In 
what  conceivable  way,  then,  has  a  postman  employed 
by  the  State  any  more  economic  freedom  than  the  mes- 
sengers of  a  private  firm? 

Nor  again  does  the  manner  in  which  the  labor  of  the 
State  employee  is  remunerated,  and  by  which  the  per- 
formance of  his  duty  is  secured,  differ  in  any  way 
from  the  wage-system  which  prevails  in  a  private  firm. 
Conformity  to  the  directions  given  him  by  some  or- 
ganizing authority  is  the  condition  on  which  this  re- 
muneration is  awarded  him;  and  though  Marx  and  his 
disciples  propose  to  substitute  labor-checks  for  dollars, 
this  is  merely  the  wage-system  called  by  another  name. 

Many  thoughtful  socialists,  though  they  have  not 
been  anxious  to  proclaim  the  fact  too  loudly,  have 
perceived  this  fact  themselves,  and  have  consequently 
been  endeavoring  to  formulate  another  scheme,  by 
which  the  requisite  industrial  conformity  to  an  organ- 
izing authority  may  be  secured,  and  which  yet  will 
eliminate  the  wage-system,  not  only  in  name,  but  in 
fact.  Now  if  we  look  back  into  the  past  history  of 
mankind  we  shall  find  that  there  actually  are  two 
alternative  systems  by  which  such  conformity  may  be, 


and  has  been,  secured.  One  of  these  is  the  corvee 
system,  prevalent  in  the  middle  ages;  the  other  sys- 
tem is  that  of  slavery.  Under  the  corvee  system  the 
peasants,  who  were  the  most  numerous  laboring  class, 
owned  the  lands  on  which  they  lived,  and  were  thus 
able  to  maintain  themselves  by  working  at  their  own 
discretion;  but  they  were  compelled  by  their  tenure  to 
place  a  certain  part  of  their  time  at  the  discretion  of 
this  or  that  superior,  and  to  work  according  to  his 
orders.  The  public  roads  in  France  were  once  made 
and  kept  in  order  thus.  If  only  a  number  of  indepen- 
dent peasant  proprietors  could  be  forced  to  give  half 
their  time  to  the  proprietor  of  a  neighboring  factory 
now,  the  entire  use  and  necessity  of  wage-capital  would, 
in  theory  at  least,  be  gone.  The  same  thing  is  true  of 
slavery.  Like  the  peasant  proprietor  who  gives  part  of 
his  time  to  his  overload,  the  slave  is  provided  with  the 
necessaries  of  life  independently  of  his  obedience  to  the 
detailed  orders  of  his  master.  His  master  feeds  him 
just  as  he  would  feed  a  horse;  and  industrial  obedience 
is  ensured  by  the  application  of  force. 

These  two  coercive  systems — the  corvee  system  and 
the  slave  system,  are  the  only  alternatives  to  the  wage- 
system  that  have  been  found  workable  in  the  whole 
past  history  of  the  world.  Let  us  now  turn  to  the  alter- 
native which  the  latest  school  of  socialists  is  now  pro- 
posing as  an  alternative  in  the  dreamed-of  socialistic 
future. 

I  will  turn  to  a  work  called  Fabian  Essays,  the  writ- 
ers of  which  include  the  best  known  and  best  educated 
socialists  in  England,  amongst  them  being  Mr.  Sidney 
Webb,  favorably  known  as  the  author  of  a  History  of 
Trade  Unionism,  and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw.  This  volume 
has  been  republished  in  America,  and  to  the  American 
edition  was  prefixed  a  special  preface.  In  this  preface 
it  is  stated,  with  regard  to  the  apportionment  of  the 
means  of  subsistence  generally,  that  the  truly  social- 
istic scheme  is  one  which  would  absolutely  abolish  "all 

32 


economic  distinctions  and  prevent  the  possibility  of  their 
ever  arising  again" — and  would  abolish  them  how? 
"By  making,"  says  this  writer,  "an  equal  provision  for 
all  an  indefeasible  condition  of  citizenship,  without  any 
regard  whatever  to  the  relative  specific  services  of  dif- 
ferent citizens.  The  rendering  of  such  services,  on  the 
other  hand,"  the  writer  goes  on,  "instead  of  being  left 
to  the  option  of  the  citizen,  with  the  alternative  of  star- 
vation, would  be  secured  under  one  uniform  law,  pre- 
cisely like  other  forms  of  taxation  of  military  service." 

Such,  then,  is  the  alternative  to  the  wage-system  put 
forward  as  the  last  word  of  the  most  intelligent  social- 
ists of  to-day ;  and  an  escape  from  the  wage-system, 
beyond  a  doubt,  it  is;  but  an  escape  into  what?  It  is 
neither  more  nor  less*  than  an  escape  into  one  of  these 
§ystems  which  I  have  just  mentioned.  That  is  to  say, 
it  is  an  escape  into  economic  slavery.  For  the  very 
essence  of  the  position  of  the  slave,  as  contrasted  with 
the  wage-paid  laborer,  in  so  far  as  the  direction  of  his 
industrial  actions  is  concerned,  is  that  he  has  not  to 
work  as  he  is  bidden  in  order  to  gain  a  livelihood;  but 
that  his  livelihood  being  assured  to  him,  no  matter  how 
he  behaves  himself,  he  is  obliged  to  work  as  he  is 
bidden  in  order  to  avoid  the  lash,  or  some  similar  form 
of  punishment. 

I  have  touched  upon  this  question,  not  for  the  purpose 
of  criticising  in  an  adverse  sense  the  methods  by  which 
the  masses  are  to  be  coerced  into  the  performance  of 
their  duties,  but  merely  for  the  purpose  of  illustrating 
what  I  have  already  said  with  regard  to  the  productive 
functions  of  capitalism,  as  it  exists  to-day.  Capitalism, 
regarded  under  its  productive  aspect,  is  essentially  a 
device  for  imposing,  by  means  of  wages  given  or  with- 
held in  accordance  to  the  industrial  obedience  of  the 
wage-earner,  the  intellect  and  the  knowledge  resident  in 
an  exceptionally  gifted  minority,  on  the  manual  opera- 
tions of  the  average  majority  of  mankind;  and  when 
socialists  talk  about  emancipation  and  economic  free- 

33 


dom,  the  only  meaning  which  their  language  can  really 
bear  is  the  emancipation  of  the  average  man  from  the 
aid  and  guidance  of  any  intellect  that  is  in  any  way 
superior  to  his  own.  Further,  when  we  ask  the  social- 
ists to  explain  their  constructive  programme,  we  find 
that  this  talk  about  freedom  is  privately  repudiated  by 
themselves,  and  that  they  propose  either  to  continue 
the  wage-system  under  a  thin  verbal  disguise,  or  else 
to  abolish  the  wage-system,  and  put  universal  slavery  in 
its  stead. 


34 


LECTURE  III. 

The  cardinal  fact  on  which  I  insisted  in  my  last 
Address  was  this,  namely,  that  popular  socialism  which 
seeks  to  realize  itself  by  an  exclusive  appeal  to  the 
majority,  bases  itself  on  a  theory  of  production  accord- 
ing to  which  all  wealth  is  the  product  of  those  faculties 
which  the  majority  must  always  exercise  in  order  to 
sustain  life,  in  respect  of  which  all  normal  men  are 
substantially,  if  not  absolutely,  equal,  and  which  in  all ) 
socialistic  discussions  are  indicated  by  the  common 
name  of  labor — the  labor  of  an  average  pair  of  hands, 
directed  by  an  average  mind — the  mind  of  the  laborer 
himself.  And  this  doctrine  is  emphasized  by  the  further 
more  detailed  contention  that  the  value  of  every  com- 
modity is  determined  by  the  number  of  hours  of  aver- 
age labor  embodied  in  it,  one  hour  of  the  labor  of  any 
one  man  being  equal  in  economic  productivity  to  one 
hour  of  the  labor  of  any  other  man.  I  pointed  out, 
further,  that  this  doctrine,  in  spite  of  many  objections 
to  it  which  ordinary  common  sense  suggests,  has  con- 
tinued to  be  accepted  by  thoughtful  people,  who  other- 
wise might  have  been  expected  to  reject  it,  because  it 
really  is,  as  Karl  Marx  claimed  tliat  it  was,  deducible 
from  the  analysis  of  production  which  still  finds  its 
place  in  the  text-books  of  the  orthodox  economists. 
The  economists  recognize  land,  or  the  powers  of  nature, 
and  also  capital,  or  the  nonhuman  implements  of  pro- 
duction, as  factors  in  the  productive  process;  but  the 
only  human  agency  which  they  recognize  in  living 
operation,  they,  like  the  socialists,  indicate  by  the  name 
of  labor. 

Such  being  the  case,  what  I  endeavored  to  make  evi- 
dent was  that  this  mass  of  human  effort  which  the 
orthodox  economists,  and  the  socialists  following  them, 

35 


grouped  together  under  the  common  name  of  labor,  is 
in  reality  not  one  sort  of  effort,  but  two ;  that  these  two 
differ  from  one  another  not  only  in  degree  but  in  kind — 
in  the  essential  method  of  their  operation;  and  that  if 
we  apply  the  name  of  labor,  as  the  socialists  do,  to  one 
— namely,  to  average  manual  industry — it  is  absolutely 
necessary  for  the  purposes  of  any  thought  and  argu- 
ment, to  apply  some  other  and  contradistinguishing 
name  to  the  other.  To  the  other  I  proposed,  in  a  special 
and  technical  sense,  to  apply  the  name  Ability;  and  the 
essential  difference  between  the  two  I  pointed  out  was 
this,  that  whereas  labor  meant  the  faculties  of  the 
individual  applied  to  his  own  labor,  Ability  consists  of 
the  intellectual  faculty  of  direction,  applied  by  one  man 
simultaneously  to  the  direction  of  the  manual  labor  of 
any  number  of  other  people. 

This  was  the  substance  of  what  I  urged  when  I  spoke 
last;  and  for  the  sake  of  clearness  I  have  thought  it 
well  to  repeat  it.  I  will  now  proceed  to  a  further  point 
— a  point  singularly  interesting  and  instructive,  and  one 
which  to  many  people  will  very  possibly  be  surprising. 
When  I  began  with  discussing  what  definite  socialism 
really  is — what  it  is  as  a  scheme  of  society  radically 
different  from  that  now  existing — I  identified  it  with 
the  economic  theory  of  Karl  Marx,  who  is  called  by 
the  socialists  still  the  father  of  scientific  socialism,  and 
whose  theory  is  still  the  basis  of  all  popular  socialistic 
agitation.  During  the  last  fifteen  years,  however,  so- 
cialists of  the  more  thoughtful  kind  have  been  com- 
pelled in  intellectual  honesty,  and  also  by  the  force  of 
facts,  to  recognize  and  admit  that  the  so-called  science 
of  Marx  was  by  no  means  so  complete  and  invulnerable 
as  it  was  supposed  to  be  at  first.  His  doctrine  that 
ordinary  labor  is  the  sole  productive  agency  has,  of 
late,  in  a  cautious  and  not  too  definite  way  been  aban- 
doned by  them;  and  they  have  actually  come  to  admit 
as  a  true,  though  unanalyzed,  generality,  the  truth  on 
which  I  am  myself  insisting — namely,  that  in  the  pro- 

36 


duction  of  modern  wealth  a  second  factor  is  involved, 
which  is  other  than  manual  labor,  and  which,  somehow 
or  other,  must  be  placed  in  a  different  category.  They 
have  come  to  admit,  further,  that,  whereas  labor  is  the 
faculty  of  the  many,  this  other  faculty  of  production  is 
essentially  the  faculty  of  the  few ;  and,  lastly,  the  more 
thoughtful  socialists  who  have  expressed  themselves  in 
the  English  language  have  agreed  with  me  in  calling 
this  faculty  Ability. 

Among  the  socialists  of  to-day  who  have  taken  this 
new  departure  it  will  be  enough  for  me  to  mention  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  and  his  close  ally  in  the  dissemination 
of  socialistic  literature,  Mr.  Sidney  Webb.  Thus,  of 
two  men  dealing  with  the  same  labor  and  capital,  one, 
says  Mr.  Shaw,  will,  in  accordance  with  his  ability,  in- 
sure the  production  of  five  times  as  much  wealth  as  the 
other.  Indeed,  he  adds  in  a  sentence  singularly  incon- 
sistent with  his  formal  gospel  as  a  socialist,  but  singu- 
larly consistent  with  his  success  as  an  individual  play- 
wright, "Socialism  will  be  the  paradise  of  Ability."  Here 
again  is  a  statement  by  Mr.  Sidney  Webb,  to  which  I 
shall  have  occasion  to  refer  more  particularly  hereafter. 
When  socialism  has  disposed,  he  says,  of  the  monopoly 
of  capital,  there  still  remains  to  be  dealt  with  one 
monopoly  more — the  monopoly  of  "business  ability." 
How  business  ability  operates  he  makes  no  attempt  to 
inquire;  but  he  recognizes  its  importance,  all  the  same, 
as  an  element  distinct  from  the  labor  which  is  alone 
recognized  by  Marx. 

I  propose,  then,  to  call  the  socialists  of  the  school 
of  Mr.  Sidney  Webb,  which  represents  a  distinct  ad- 
vance on  the  crude  socialism  of  Karl  Marx,  by  the 
name  of  the  New  Socialists.  It  must,  however,  be 
observed  that,  though  they  have  to  a  great  extent  modi- 
fied the  basis  on  which  the  socialism  of  Marx  rested, 
they  insist  that  they  have  in  view  the  same  practical 
end — namely,  a  complete  redistribution  of  wealth  in 
such  a  way  that  every  man  shall  receive  an  absolutely 

37 


equal  portion.  I  have  already  quoted  a  passage  in 
which  Mr.  Webb  insists  on  this.  No  scheme,  he  says, 
of  society  is  truly  socialistic  which  does  not  abolish 
all  economic  inequalities,  and  which  will  not  do  away 
with  the  possibility  of  their  ever  arising  again. 

Now  such  being  the  case,  the  New  Socialists — the 
more  thoughtful  socialists  of  to-day,  have  come  to  per- 
ceive that  they  have  a  new  task  before  them.  The 
original  argument  of  socialism — and  it  still  remains  the 
only  popular  argument — was  that  the  majority,  or  the 
manual  laborers,  ought  to  possess  all  wealth,  and  pos- 
sess it  in  equal  quantities,  because  they  alone  produce 
it,  and  each  laborer  produces  the  same  amount.  Pop- 
ular socialism,  in  short,  is  an  appeal  to  the  general 
principle  of  justice,  which  is  assumed  as  self-evident, 
that  each  man  is  entitled  to  enjoy  whatever  he  himself 
produces.  But  now  that  the  New  fSocialists,  such  as 
Mr.  Webb,  have  been  forced  to  make  the  admission 
that  the  ability  of  the  few  is  a  productive  agent,  no 
less  than  the  labor  of  the  many,  and  that  consequently 
some  men  contribute  more  to  the  productive  process 
than  others,  their  main  preoccupation  of  late  has  been 
to  formulate  a  line  of  argument  by  which  the  practical 
effect  of  their  recognition  of  ability  may  be  minimized, 
and  the  able  few,  though  they  produce  more  than  the 
many,  may  be  shut  out  from  any  unequal  claim  on  the 
products.  I  am,  therefore,  going  to  ask  you  to  con- 
sider the  kind  of  reasoning  to  which  the  New  Social- 
ists, for  this  purpose,  betake  themselves.  In  certain 
respects  it  forms  a  very  interesting  study;  for  it  mainly 
consists  of  arguments  which  they  found  already  pre- 
pared for  them  by  a  variety  of  distinguished  thinkers 
who  had  nothing  to  do  with  socialism. 

These  arguments  divide  themselves  into  four  classes. 
They  all  turn  on  the  nature  and  the  effects  of  those 
superior  efficiencies  which  distinguish  the  few  from 
the  many,  and  to  which,  in  the  economic  sphere,  we 
are  giving  the  name  of  Ability. 

38 


One  class  of  arguments  consists  in  the  contention 
that,  though  all  the  advances  made  in  man's  pro- 
ductive powers  may  have  originated  in  discoveries 
made  originally  by  exceptional  men,  yet  each  discov- 
ery, when  made,  really  becomes  common  property,  and 
the  increment  due  to  it  would,  apart  from  artificial  re- 
strictions, pass  over  to  the  human  race  at  large. 

A  second  class  of  arguments  insists  that  the  superior- 
ities in  question  are  really  much  smaller  than  their  ef- 
fects would  seem  to  indicate,  that  they  are  also  much 
more  numerous,  and  that  were  opportunity  equalized, 
the  supply  of  them  would  be  greater  than  the  demand. 

A  third  class  of  arguments,  while  admitting  that  the 
inequalities  between  man  and  man  are  really  great,  and 
that  men  of  the  highest  efficiency  are  not  any  commoner 
than  they  appear  to  be,  insists  on  the  fact  that  they 
are  effective  only  through  their  environment,  which  it- 
self is  what  it  is  only  through  the  ages  that  have  pre- 
ceded it. 

A  fourth  class  of  argument,  which  is  a  variant  of 
this  last,  deals  with  the  nature  of  the  individual  supe- 
riorities themselves,  and  insists  on  the  fact  that  they 
are  due  to  the  development  of  the  community  in  the 
past,  and  should  therefore  be  at  the  disposition  of  the 
whole  community  in  the  present. 

I  will  now  take  these  four  classes  of  argument  in 
order:  and  we  shall  see  that  though  they  all  of  them 
contain  an  element  of  truth  they  are  ajTalike  vitiated  V* 
by  imperfections  and  curious  confusions  of  thought 
which,  in  their  present  application,  render  them  prac- 
tically valueless. 

Let  us  begin  with  the  argument,  so  constantly  urged 
by  socialists,  that  inventions  and  discoveries  once  made 
become  common  property.  In  certain  cases  this  is  true. 
The  best  example  of  such  a  case  is  the  discovery  of 
fire.  Even  if  we  suppose  that  the  first  man  who  dis- 
covered how  to  light  a  fire  was  incomparably  cleverer 
than  his  fellows ;  yet  as  soon  as  the  method  of  lighting 

39 


a  fire  was  made  known  to  them  the  fool  could  light  a 
fire  just  as  well  as  the  genius.  But  the  inventions,  the 
discoveries,  and  the  knowledge  which  thus  become  com- 
mon property  are  only  those  of  the  simplest,  and  of  a 
very  limited  kind.  In  proportion  as  knowledge  ad- 
vances, and  its  application  to  industry  becomes  more 
various,  complex,  and  efficacious,  industrial  inventions 
and  discoveries  no  more  become  common  property 
than  assimilated  and  encyclopedic  knowledge  about  all 
conceivable  subjects  becomes  the  property  of  everybody 
who  buys  an  encyclopedia;  or  than  Newton's  mastery 
of  mathematics  communicates  itself  to  every  urchin 
who  can  do  an  addition  sum.  It  is  perfectly  true  that 
the  acquirement  of  new  knowledge  by  one  discoverer 
enables  other  men  to  acquire  it  who  might  never  have 
acquired  it  otherwise;  but  as  the  acquisition  of  the  de- 
tails of  knowledge  increases,  the  number  of  details  in- 
volved in  the  processes  of  progressive  industry  increases 
likewise,  is  accompanied  by  an  increased  difficulty  in 
acquiring  and  assimilating  all;  and,  that  this  is  so,  is 
illustrated  by  the  notorious  fact  that  so  many  of  those 
preeminent  as  mere  speculative  inventors  and  discov- 
erers are  notoriously  helpless  in  giving  their  inventions 
and  discoveries  effect  in  the  world  of  actual  industry. 
Or  to  turn  to  the  case  of  men  of  ordinary  intelligence, 
any  mechanic  could,  after  half  an  hour's  attention  to 
the  subject,  comprehend  the  general  principles  involved 
in  a  cantilever  bridge;  but  to  construct  one  of  the  steel 
bridges  of  enormous  span,  which  now  throw  their  arms 
across  our  great  rivers  and  estuaries,  demands  an  as- 
similation of  multitudinous  knowledge  which  taxes  the 
genius  of  the  greatest  engineers  of  the  day.  For  the 
practical  man,  no  less  than  the  philosopher,  living 
knowledge  lives  only  in  the  individual  mind;  and  it 
exists  there  only  in  proportion  as  the  living  mind  com- 
bines a  multiplicity  of  facts  into  an  organic  and  opera- 
tive whole.  In  other  words,  the  kingdom  of  knowledge 
is  like  the  kingdom  of  Heaven.  From  generation  to 

40 


generation  the  violent  take  it  by  force;  and  it  is  only 
the  violent — or  the  men  of  exceptional  capacity — who 
are  able,  in  any  comprehensive  way,  to  take  possession 
of  it  at  all. 

And  now  let  us  come  to  the  second  class  of  argu- 
ments, which  seeks  to  eliminate  the  difference  between 
the  exceptional  mind  and  the  ordinary,  not  by  insist- 
ing that  the  latter  appropriates  the  triumphs  of  the 
former  as  soon  as  these  have  been  accomplished,  but 
by  representing  the  difference  between  the  two  as  be- 
ing, in  its  nature,  slight,  and  as  due  to  the  accidents 
of  opportunity  rather  than  to  natural  differences.  I 
will  take  this  contention  as  expressed  in  a  philosophical 
form  by  two  eminent  thinkers  outside  of  the  social- 
istic camp.  The  first  of  these  shall  be  Mr.  Benjamin 
Kidd,  whose  work  "Social  Evolution"  has  probably 
enjoyed  a  wider  circulation  than  any  work  of  the 
kind  that  has  been  published  during  recent  times. 
Mr.  Kidd  says  that  the  smallness  of  the  differences 
between  one  man  and  another  is  proved  by  the  fact 
that,  whenever  any  great  discovery  or  invention  has 
been  made,  it  has  nearly  always  been  made  simul- 
taneously by  several  persons  working  independently  of 
one  another,  the  man  who  gets  the  honor  of  the  dis- 
covery or  the  rewards  arising  from  the  invention  owing 
his  fortunate  position  to  luck  at  the  last  moment. 
Thus,  says  Mr.  Kidd,  "the  differential  calculus,  the  in- 
vention of  the  steam  engine,  the  methods  of  spectrum 
analysis,  the  telegraph,  the  telephone,  as  well  as  many 
other  discoveries,"  have  all  been  arrived  at  in  this  way. 
The  name  of  one  man  is  popularly  associated  with  each 
of  them,  but  in  each  case  there  have  been  so  many 
others  whose  achievement  has  been  the  same  as  his. 
The  class  of  fact  to  which  Mr.  Kidd  alludes  is  notori- 
ous; but  how  does  it  tend  to  substantiate  the  proposi- 
tion which  he  aims  at  proving — that  the  differences 
between  exceptional  men  and  the  mass  of  their  con- 
temporaries is  slight?  The  fact  of  his  thinking  that  it 

41 


does  so  is  a  most  curious  and  instructive  illustration 
of  the  carelessness  with  which  many  of  the  most  honest 
and  serious  thinkers  will  allow  themselves  to  reason 
when  they  deal  with  social  subjects.  The  fact  that  half 
a  dozen,  or  even  twenty  or  thirty  men  should  arrive 
at  the  same  time  at  the  same  discoveries  independently 
no  more  goes  to  show  that  all  men  are  approximately 
equal  in  intelligence  than  the  fact  that  half  a  dozen 
race  horses  pass  the  winning  post  within  a  few  seconds 
of  one  another  proves  that  every  cart  horse  or  donkey 
that  moves  upon  four  legs  has  an  equal  chance  of  win- 
ning the  Derby  or  the  Grand  Prix.  That  more  men 
than  one  should  reach  at  the  same  time  the  same  dis- 
covery independently  is  precisely  what  we  should  be 
led  to  expect  when  we  consider  what  that  discovery  is. 
The  facts  of  nature  which  form  the  subject  matter  of 
the  discoverer  are  in  themselves  as  independent  of  those 
who  discover  them  as  an  Alpine  peak  is  of  those  who 
attempt  to  climb  it;  and  the  fact  that  a  number  of  men 
reach  the  same  discovery  at  once  does  no  more  to 
suggest  that  the  mass  of  their  contemporaries  could 
have  reached  it  than  the  fact  that  half  a  dozen  of  the 
most  intrepid  cragsmen  in  the  world  reach  during  the 
same  year  some  hitherto  unascended  summit  proves 
that  the  same  feat  could  have  been  accomplished  by 
any  man  or  boy  in  the  street  who  would  be  made  sick 
and  giddy  by  a  precipice  of  twenty  yards. 

We  will  now  take  another  exposition  of  the  same 
doctrine,  and  this  shall  be  from  a  writer  whose  advocacy 
of  it  is  far  more  surprising  than  Mr.  Kidd's.  I  refer  to 
Lord  Macaulay.  In  Macaulay's  criticisms  of  the  Eng- 
lish poet  Dryden  there  occurs  the  following  passage: 
"It  is  the  age  that  makes  the  man,  not  the  man  that 
makes  the  age.  The  inequalities  of  the  intellect,  like 
the  inequalities  of  the  surface  of  the  globe,  bear  so 
small  a  proportion  to  the  mass  that  in  calculating  its 
great  revolutions  they  may  safely  be  neglected."  No 
doubt  for  those  who  study  the  revolutions  of  our  planet 

42 


as  astronomers  the  inequalities  of  its  surface  are  small 
and  practically  negligible;  but  because  they  are  noth- 
ing to  the  astronomer  it  does  not  follow  that  they  are 
nothing  to  the  engineer  and  the  geographer.  And  a 
similar  observation  holds  good  with  regard  to  the  in- 
equalities of  individual  efficiencies,  when  considered  in 
connection  with  practical  economic  problems.  The 
practical  economist,  and  more  especially  the  socialist, 
does  not  look  at  the  human  race  from  the  remote  and 
detached  standpoint  of  the  social  astronomer.  They 
look  at  it  from  the  near  standpoint  of  the  social  geog- 
rapher and  engineer.  They— and  especially  the  social- 
ists— are  not  content  to  concern  themselves  with  the 
human  race  as  a  whole.  They  are  concerned  with  ad- 
vancing certain  claims  on  behalf  of  one  portion  of  it  as 
contrasted  with  another  portion.  To  the  astronomer 
the  Alps  may  be  a  mere  meaningless  excrescence;  but 
they  were  not  so  to  Hannibal,  or  to  the  makers  of 
the  Mont  Cenis  tunnel.  What  to  the  astronomer  are 
all  the  dikes  of  Holland?  But  they  are  everything  to 
the  Dutch  between  a  dead  nation  and  a  living  one. 

So  much,  then,  for  the  philosophic  or  speculative 
attempts  at  minimizing  the  degrees  and  importance  of 
the  intellectual  inequalities  of  mankind.  In  the  purely 
speculative  sphere  they  may  have  some  meaning;  but 
in  the  practical  sphere  they  have  none. 

There  still  remains,  however,  an  argument,  urged 
with  the  same  purpose,  which  is  very  frequently  used, 
and  which  bases  itself  not  on  theories,  but  on  assumed 
facts.  I  mean  the  argument  that,  no  matter  how  con- 
siderable the  interval  may  be  between  the  congenital 
powers  of  the  exceptional  man  and  the  average  man, 
the  former  are  really  much  commoner  than  they  seem 
to  be,  and  that  with  an  extension  of  opportunity  the 
supply  of  them  would  be  indefinitely  increased.  Now 
the  first  thing  to  note  is  that,  even  were  this  conten- 
tion true,  it  would  not  point  to  the  possibility  of  ever 
establishing  the  economic  democracy  essential  to  the 

43 


Utopia  of  the  socialists.  It  would  merely  point  to  the 
possibility  of  establishing  a  more  numerous  economic 
oligarchy. 

The  question,  however,  which  I  here  will  ask  you  to 
consider  is  not  the  consequences  of  this  contention,  if 
we  admit  it,  but  the  question  of  how  far  it  receives  any 
countenance  from  facts.  Accident  and  opportunity  may 
do  much  in  individual  cases  to  make  one  man  of  talent 
succeed,  and  another,  whose  gifts  were  congenitally 
equal,  fail.  But  what  here  concerns  us  is  not  the  ex- 
ceptions, but  the  rule.  In  a  broad  and  general  way, 
does  the  equalizing  of  opportunity  result  in  an  increased 
development  of  the  higher  forms  of  talent?  In  connec- 
tion with  this  question  we  have  abundant  experience  to 
appeal  to.  Let  us  take  any  college  of  music.  The 
opportunities  of  all  pupils,  when  once  admitted  to  it, 
are  equal ;  but  out  of  every  thousand  aspirants  who 
profit  by  the  same  instructors,  does  every  year  pro- 
vide us  with  a  hundred  Melbas  or  Paderewskis?  An 
even  better  example,  perhaps,  is  provided  us  by  the 
French  army,  in  which,  since  the  days  of  Napoleon, 
every  private  has  carried  the  field  marshal's  baton  in 
his  knapsack.  Has  the  past  century  in  France  pro- 
duced a  crop  of  Napoleons?  Look  at  the  career  of 
Boulanger.  If  ever  opportunity  was  offered  a  man, 
opportunity  was  offered  to  him.  He  had  everything 
in  his  favor  except  the  power  to  make  use  of  any- 
thing. No  doubt  the  extension  of  opportunities  of  a 
certain  kind  may  enable  all  to  acquire  powers  which 
were  once  the  monopoly  of  the  few.  Thus  to-day  al- 
most everybody  possesses  the  power  of  writing;  but 
we  have  not  produced  millions  of  great  writers — think- 
ers like  Kant  or  Bacon,  poets  like  Goethe,  or  novelists 
like  Dickens  or  Balzac. 

Let  us  now  pass  on  to  that  further  class  of  arguments 
which  aim  at  minimizing  the  importance  of  exceptional 
talents  by  contending  that  they  would  be  wholly  inef- 
fectual apart  from  their  social  environment.  And  here 

44 


again  we  are  not  dealing  with  socialistic  thinkers  only. 
Indeed,  the  writer  who  has  expressed  this  argument 
with  most  force  and  precision  was,  so  far  as  his  per- 
sonal intentions  went,  one  of  the  most  bitter  opponents 
of  the  entire  programme  of  socialism.  I  refer  to  Her- 
bert Spencer.  And  yet,  curiously  enough,  no  one  has 
done  more  to  give  currency  to  the  particular  argument 
now  in  question  than  he.  Let  me  give  you  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  passages  in  vrhich  he  puts  this  argu- 
ment forward.  The  illustration  which  he  takes  is  not 
strictly  an  economic  one,  but  literary.  But  it  applies  to 
economic  production  no  less  than  to  literature.  Let  us, 
say.s  Herbert  Spencer,  take  the  case  of  Shakespeare. 
"Given  a  Shakespeare,"  he  says,  "and  what  dramas 
could  he  have  written  without  the  multitudinous  condi- 
tions of  civilized  life  around  him — the  various  tradi- 
tions descending  to  him  from  the  past,  without  the 
language  which  a  hundred  generations  had  developed 
and  enriched  by  use?  A  Laplace,"  he  adds,  "could  not 
have  got  very  far  with  his  'Mechanique  Celeste'  unless 
he  had  been  aided  by  the  slowly  developed  system  of 
mathematics,  which  we  trace  back  to  its  beginnings 
among  the  ancient  Egyptians."  Herbert  Spencer  could 
not  have  put  the  socialistic  view  of  the  matter  more 
clearly;  and  the  answer  to  the  question  which  he  raises 
is  not  only  obvious,  but  contains  the  solution  of  the 
entire  problem  which  we  are  discussing.  It  takes  the 
form  of  a  counterquestion.  Given  the  conditions  of 
civilized  life,  the  traditions  of  England  and  its  language 
as  they  were  at  the  time  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  how  could 
all  these  have  produced  dramas  like  "King  Lear"  or 
"Hamlet,"  unless  England  had  happened  to  possess  that 
unique  phenomenon,  a  Shakespeare?  All  of  Shake- 
speare's contemporaries  possessed  the  same  environment 
that  he  did,  the  same  language,  the  same  past;  but  out 
of  these  conditions  one  man  alone  was  capable  of  elicit- 
ing the  results  elicited  by  Shakespeare.  And  the  case 
with  Laplace  and  his  great  work  is  similar.  The  real 

45 


explanation  of  the  whole  difficulty  is  this.  Everyone 
living  at  the  same  time,  and  in  the  same  society,  is  an 
inheritor  of  the  past  and  an  absorber  of  the  surround- 
ing present;  but  they  inherit  the  past  and  they  absorb 
the  present  in  very  different  degrees.  They  inherit  the 
knowledge  of  the  past  only  according  to  the  degree  in 
which  they  acquire  and  vitalize  it;  the  language  of  the 
past  only  in  accordance  with  their  own  power  of  ma- 
nipulating it;  the  whole  gifts  of  the  past  and  present 
only  in  accordance  with  their  power  of  making  these 
gifts  their  own.  If  we  want  to  compare  one  age  with 
another,  then  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophizing  is  at  once 
just  and  significant.  If  we  want  to  compare  one  man 
of  the  same  age  with  another,  it  is  wholly  beside  the 
mark,  and  has  no  significance  whatsoever. 

And  now  it  remains  for  us  to  consider  one  argument 
more,  which,  taking  the  existence  of  exceptional  talent 
for  granted,  aims  at  eliminating  any  exceptional  claims 
that  may  be  founded  on  it.  I  will  give  it  to  you  as 
formulated,  in  all  solemnity,  by  Mr.  Sidney  Webb— 
and  I  could  not  take  a  more  favorable  example  of 
socialism  throwing  down  an  intellectual  gantlet  to  the 
world.  Mr.  Webb  is  one  of  those  who,  though  they 
reject  the  doctrine  of  Marx  that  all  productive  effort 
is  absolutely  equal  in  productivity,  and  admit,  on  the 
contrary,  as  we  have  seen  already,  that  behind  all  mo- 
nopolies of  capital  or  the  means  of  production  there 
remains  the  personal  monopoly  of  what  he  calls  business 
ability,  maintains  nevertheless  no  less  stoutly  than  Marx 
did  that  nothing  is  socialism  which  does  not  reward  all 
men  equally,  though  it  must  be  conceded  that  some  men 
produce  incomparably  more  than  others.  In  other 
words,  in  proportion  as  a  man  is  talented  he  is  to  get 
less  than  he  produces ;  and  in  proportion  as  he  is  stupid 
he  is  to  get  more.  Mr.  Webb  admits  that  this  looks 
like  a  moral  paradox,  and  that  it  requires  some  intel- 
lectual justification;  and  the  justification  put  forward 
by  himself  and  the  New  Socialists  he  sums  up  as  fol- 

46 


lows:  Exceptional  productive  ability  has  no  right  to 
any  exceptional  share  of  the  products,  because — and 
here  I  am  giving  you  Mr.  Webb's  own  words — "the 
special  ability  or  energy  with  which  some  persons  are 
born  is  an  unearned  increment  due  to  the  effect  of  the 
struggle  for  existence  on  their  ancestors,  and  conse- 
quently, having  been  produced  by  society,  is  as  much 
due  to  society  as  the  unearned  increment  of  rent." 

Now  here  we  have  one  of  the  most  advanced  utter- 
ances of  the  New  School  of  socialists,  which  claims  to 
have  raised  socialistic  doctrine  to  its  highest  intellectual 
level ;  and  we  will  pay  it  the  compliment  of  examining 
it  with  as  much  care  as  it  is  stated.  The  idea  involved 
in  it  is  very  easy  to  grasp.  The  superiority  of  the  man 
of  ability  is  an  inheritance  from  his  superior  ancestors ; 
but  his  ancestors  would  not  have  had  the  superiority 
which  they  have  handed  on  to  him  if  it  had  not  been 
developed  in  a  struggle  with  contemporaries  inferior  to 
themselves.  The  inferiors  were  a  strop  or  hone  on 
which  the  faculties  of  the  superiors  were  sharpened. 
The  inferiors,  therefore,  may  claim,  in  virtue  of  their 
very  inferiority,  to  have  been  the  joint  authors  of  the 
superiority  of  the  superiors;  and  the  whole  body  of 
society,  and  not  the  superiors  alone,  may  claim  an  equal 
share  in  the  products  of  these  contemporary  men  of 
ability  who  thus  owe  their  powers  to  the  whole  of 
society  in  the  past.  Now  to  this  argument,  just  as  to 
that  of  Herbert  Spencer  and  of  Macaulay,  we  may  con- 
cede a  certain  speculative  truth.  We  may  accept  it,  in- 
deed, as  a  speculative  platitude ;  but  it  has  no  more 
application  to  the  facts  of  practical  life  than  has  Ma- 
caulay's  argument  that,  because  the  inequalities  of  the 
earth's  surface  have  no  significance  for  the  astronomer 
who  is  dealing  with  the  earth's  revolutions,  mountains 
and  seas  and  valleys  have  no  effect  on  the  life  of  nations. 
In  order  to  see  this  we  need  merely  follow  Mr.  Webb's 
example  and  carry  his  own  logic  a  little  further  than 
he  has  done  himself.  If  the  inferior  competitors  who 

47 


have  been  beaten  by  the  Ability  of  the  superior  are  to 
be  credited  with  having  helped  to  produce  the  efficien- 
cies by  which  they  were  themselves  defeated,  the  French 
might  have  said  to  the  Germans  at  the  end  of  the 
Franco-Prussian  war,  "You  acquired  by  fighting  us  the 
experience  which  has  enabled  you  to  conquer  us. 
Your  strength,  therefore,  in  reality  belongs  to  us,  not 
you;  and  hence  justice  requires  of  you  that  you  give 
us  back  Alsace." 

And  other  absurdities  follow  more  fantastic  even 
than  this.  If  the  able  man  of  to-day  owes  his  excep- 
tional productivity  to  society  as  a  whole,  it  is  to  society 
as  a  whole  that  the  idle  man  owes  his  idleness,  and  the 
stupid  man  his  stupidity,  and  the  dishonest  man  his  dis- 
honesty ;  and  if  the  man  who  produces  much  is  able  to 
claim  with  justice  no  more  than  the  man  who  produces 
little,  the  man  who  is  so  idle  that  he  shirks  producing 
anything,  may  with  equal  justice  claim  as  much  wealth 
as  either. 

Mr.  Webb's  argument,  indeed,  is  a  concentration  of 
that  radical  error  by  which  all  the  other  arguments, 
which  we  have  just  been  considering,  are  vitiated — 
namely,  the  confusion  between  what  is  true  for  the 
philosopher,  who  is  considering  humanity  in  the  mass, 
and  what  is  true  for  the  practical  man,  whose  sole 
practical  concern  is  with  the  different  individuals  and 
classes  of  which  the  mass  is  composed;  and  Mr.  Webb's 
argument  is  here  the  most  valuable  of  all  of  them  as 
showing  the  desperate  absurdities  into  which  intellec- 
tual socialism  is  being  driven  to-day,  in  order  to  hide 
from  itself  the  consequence  of  these  productive  inequal- 
ities between  men,  which  in  common  sense  and  honesty 
it  can  no  longer  deny. 

In  spite,  then,  of  all  that  socialistic  logic  can  do,  the 
hard  fact  remains  that  the  monopolists  of  business  Abil- 
ity do,  as  a  practical  fact,  in  a  personal  and  individual 
sense,  that  which  marks  them  off  from  the  majority  as 
a  practically  separate  class.  But  even  if  we  suppose 

48 


all  this  to  be  admitted  the  arguments  open  to  the  social- 
ists are  not  ended  yet.  There  are  others  which,  if  not 
exactly  enabling  them  to  contend  that  the  able  minority 
are  to  be  credited  with  the  production  of  no  more 
wealth  than  the  majority,  yet  enable  them  to  obscure 
the  question  of  what  the  relative  productivity  of  the  two 
classes  is;  and  these  arguments  are  specially  deserv- 
ing of  examination,  firstly,  because  they  have  the  au- 
thority of  the  most  celebrated  of  the  orthodox  econo- 
mists— namely,  Mill;  and  secondly,  because,  by  a  con- 
sideration of  the  fallacy  involved  in  them,  we  shall  best 
arrive  at  a  realization  of  the  hard  practical  truth. 
These  arguments,  reduced  to  their  simplest  form,  come 
to  this — that  even  if  we  admit  that  labor,  if  undirected 
by  Ability,  would  produce  no  more  than  a  fraction  of 
the  wealth  which  is  produced  now,  yet  Ability  in  the 
absence  of  labor  would  produce  absolutely  nothing. 
And  Mill,  in  the  opening  chapter  of  his  treatise  on 
political  economy,  deals  with  a  situation  of  this  kind 
in  a  way  which  is  eminently  applicable  to  the  exi- 
gencies of  socialistic  theory.  "Some  thinkers,"  says 
Mill,  "have  debated  whether  nature  or  land  gives  more 
assistance  to  labor  in  one  kind  of  industry  than  in  an- 
other; and  he  goes  on  to  contend  that  this  question  is 
useless  and  unanswerable.  When  two  conditions,"  he 
says — and  this  is  the  classical  passage  to  which  I  would 
specially  direct  your  attention — "are  equally  necessary 
for  producing  the  effect  at  all,  it  is  unmeaning  to  say 
that  so  much  of  it  is  produced  by  one  and  so  much  by 
another.  It  is  like  attempting  to  decide  which  of  the 
factors,  five  or  six,  has  most  to  do  in  the  production 
of  thirty."  And  if  this  contention  is  applicable  to  na- 
ture and  human  industry  as  a  whole,  it  would  appear 
to  be  applicable  to  labor  and  the  faculties  by  which 
labor  is  directed,  in  order  to  produce  wealth  of  a  given 
amount  and  quality — or  what  Mill  would  speak  of  as 
"the  effect." 
Mill  himself  brings  it  forward  with  special  reference 

49 


to  agriculture.  Let  us,  he  says  in  substance,  take  the 
products  of  any  farm — symbolizing  these,  for  conven- 
ience' sake,  as  one  loaf  of  bread  per  acre;  and  it  will 
be  obviously  unmeaning  to  inquire  which  produces 
most  of  each  loaf — the  field  or  the  farm  laborers.  Now 
if  there  were  only  one  farm  in  the  world,  and  every 
acre  of  this,  when  the  same  amount  of  labor  was  ap- 
plied to  it,  would  always  yield  precisely  the  same  prod- 
uce— that  is  to  say,  one  loaf — Mill's  assertion  would  be 
true.  The  actual  state  of  the  case,  however,  though  Mill 
failed  to  see  this,  is  different  in  one  essential  particular. 
Acres  vary  very  greatly  in  quality;  and  if  we  take  four 
acres  of  differing  degrees  of  fertility,  and  suppose  them 
all  to  be  cultivated  by  an  equal  amount  of  labor,  we 
shall  find  if  the  poorest  yield  a  product  per  acre  of  one 
loaf,  the  others,  according  to  their  superiority,  will 
yield  a  product  of  two  loaves,  of  three,  of  four.  Here, 
the  labor  being  in  each  of  the  four  cases  the  same,  and 
the  additional  loaves  resulting  in  three  cases  only,  it  is 
obvious  that  the  differences  between  the  smaller  output 
and  the  larger  cannot  be  due  to  the  labor,  and  yet  it 
must  be  due  to  something.  It  must,  therefore,  be  due 
to  certain  qualities  present  in  the  three  superior  acres, 
and  not  present  in  the  inferior.  In  other  words,  al- 
though, in  producing  the  loaves,  the  parts  played  re- 
spectively by  land  and  labor  are  indefinite  and  incom- 
mensurable, precisely  as  Mill  says  they  are,  so  long  as 
the  land  labor  and  the  product  or  the  effect  remain 
the  same,  these  parts  become  measurable  immediately 
that  the  effect  begins  to  vary,  and  one  of  the  causes, 
and  only  one  of  them,  varies  also. 

And  the  same  criticism  is  applicable  to  the  produc- 
tion of  wealth  generally,  and  the  quantities  of  it  which 
are  referable  to  manual  labor  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
various  forms  of  Ability  by  which  labor  is  directed  on 
the  other.  If  man  for  man  the  industrial  population 
of  a  country  always  produced  the  same  total  output  of 
wealth,  if  relatively  to  its  population  the  country  never 

50 


got  richer,  and  future  laborers  and  the  directors  of 
labor  followed  always  the  same  routine,  the  two  causes 
being  unvarying,  and  the  effect  unvarying  also,  it  would 
be,  as  Mill  contends,  at  once  impossible  and  unmean- 
ing, to  say  that  one  of  the  necessary  causes  contrib- 
uted more  to  the  total  effect  than  the  other.  But  the 
principal  feature  of  the  modern  world  which  the  econo- 
mist has  to  consider,  is  not  what  Mill  calls  the  effect, 
or  a  product  which  annually  repeats  itself,  but  is  a 
series  of  different  effects,  or  outputs  of  wealth,  which, 
relatively  to  the  amount  of  average  labor  involved  in 
them,  has,  decade  by  decade,  been  increasing  for  the 
last  hundred  and  fifty  years.  Now  the  capacities  of  the 
human  being,  in  point  of  manual  strength  and  dexter- 
ity, have  hardly  increased  since  the  days  of  the  Greeks 
and  Romans.  The  handicrafts  of  the  ancient  world — 
as  we  see  by  the  work  of  the  masons  who  built  the 
Parthenon  and  the  Coliseum — were  not  inferior  to  the 
handicrafts  of  the  best  manual  workers  of  to-day.  The 
average  labor,  therefore,  of  any  thousand  men  has  cer- 
tainly not  changed  its  quality  in  the  course  of  the  past 
five  generations.  But  within  that  time,  in  the  civilized 
countries  of  the  world,  the  output  of  wealth  per  thou- 
sand of  the  men  engaged  in  industry  is  from  three  to 
five  times  as  great  as  it  was  at  the  beginning  of  the 
period  in  question.  Now,  however  this  augmented 
effect  it  produced,  even  the  New  Socialists,  such  as  Mr. 
Sidney  Webb,  admit  that  it  has  two  causes — namely, 
Ability  and  average  labor;  and  that  it  is  not  due,  as 
Marx  said,  to  average  labor  alone.  But,  since  the  aver- 
age manual  power  of  the  average  man's  hands  has  un- 
dergone no  change  during  the  short  period  in  question 
— since  the  mere  manual  labor  of  a  thousand  men  to- 
day is  not  different  from  the  labor  of  a  thousand  men 
in  the  days  of  our  great-grandfathers,  and  since,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  is  no  less  obvious  that  the  Ability  by 
which  labor  is  directed  has  undergone  changes  of  a 
very  important  kind — among  these  being  its  increased 

51 


concentration  on  the  processes  of  productive  industry — 
it  is  obvious  that  the  excess  of  wealth  produced  per 
head  of  the  industrial  population  now  over  that  pro- 
duced some  five  generations  ago,  is  due  to  the  cause 
that  has  undergone  a  marked  variation,  and  not  to  the 
cause  which  has  practically  remained  unaltered.  Let 
us  turn  back  to  the  illustration  given  by  Mill.  It  is 
meaningless  to  inquire  which  of  the  two  factors,  five 
and  six,  does  most  to  produce  the  result  thirty.  What 
Mill  overlooked  was  that  the  kind  of  result  we  are  con- 
cerned is  not  a  result  which  can  be  represented  by  one 
number,  such  as  thirty,  but  a  result  which  was  thirty 
yesterday,  and  to-day  has  risen  to  sixty,  and  will  be 
before  long  eighty,  ninety,  or  a  hundred.  The  ques- 
tion, therefore,  is  not  whether  five  or  six  does  most  to 
produce  thirty,  but  whether,  when  the  result  is  raised 
from  thirty  to  sixty,  the  increase  is  due  to  five,  or  the 
stationary  number  multiplied,  or  the  change  in  the  mul- 
tiplying number,  which  will  have  risen  from  six  to 
twelve.  When  the  question  is  put  thus,  the  answer  is 
unmistakable.  Labor,  or  the  number  five,  is  in  short  the 
industrial  unit,  and  directing  Ability  is  the  number  by 
which  its  efficiency  is  increasingly  multiplied — the  in- 
crement being  due  to  the  multiplying  number  which 
increases,  not  to  the  number  multiplied,  which  remains 
virtually  the  same. 

Let  me  give  you  a  simple  illustration.  If  there  were 
only  one  shipyard  in  the  world,  and  this  always  con- 
tained one  thousand  workmen,  always  working  under 
the  direction  of  the  same  master,  and  if  it  always  took 
these  men  one  year  to  build  a  vessel  of  a  given  size 
and  class,  we  could  not  divide  the  vessel  into  so  many 
separate  parts,  and  say  that  so  many  were  produced  by 
the  laborers,  and  so  many  by  the  men  directing  them. 
But  if  a  new  master  builder  for  one  year  took  the  place 
of  the  old,  and  if  the  same  workmen,  working  under 
the  new  master,  produced  in  that  year  not  one  vessel, 
but  two;  and  further,  if  in  the  year  following  the  new 

52 


master  disappeared,  and  the  old  master  came  back 
again,  and  the  year's  work  once  more  resulted  in  the 
production,  not  of  two  vessels,  but  of  only  one  as  be- 
fore, then  we  should  be  able  to  say  as  a  matter  of 
common  sense  with  regard  to  the  year  during  which 
the  two  vessels  were  built,  that  the  second  vessel,  what- 
ever might  be  the  case  with  the  first,  was  due  wholly 
to  the  Ability  of  the  master  by  whom  the  labor  of  the 
workmen  was  directed.  In  other  words,  the  Ability  of 
the  director  of  labor  produces  as  much  of  the  product, 
or  of  that  product's  value,  as  exceeds  what  was  pro- 
duced by  the  laborers  before  their  labor  was  directed 
by  him,  and  ceases  to  be  produced  by  them  any  longer 
as  soon  as  his  direction  is  withdrawn. 

That  this  increment  of  excess  cannot,  in  any  practical 
sense,  be  ascribed  to  average  labor  will  be  yet  more 
apparent  if  we  suppose  that  the  production  of  it  was  not 
beneficial,  but  criminal.  I  can  explain  my  meaning  best 
by  taking  an  illustration  from  the  sphere  of  political 
rather  than  of  economic  activity.  A  hundred  Russian 
workmen,  all  of  them  loyal  to  the  Czar,  are,  we  will 
suppose,  employed  by  a  citizen  of  Moscow  to  enlarge 
a  subterranean  cellar,  and  another  hundred  are  em- 
ployed to  fill  this  cellar  with  wine  cases.  A  week  after 
the  work  is  completed  the  Czar  is  driving  by  outside, 
and  as  he  passes  the  citizen's  house  is  killed  by  an  ex- 
plosion from  below.  It  is  then  apparent  that  the  so- 
called  cellar  was  a  mine,  and  that  the  so-called  wine 
cases  were  really  filled  with  dynamite.  Now  if  all  those 
concerned  in  the  consummation  of  this  catastrophe  were 
tried,  it  is  perfectly  evident  that  the  part  played  by  the 
workmen  would  be  sharply  separated  from  that  played 
by  the  man  employing  them,  and  that,  although  no 
doubt  they  contributed  something  to  the  result,  they 
contributed  nothing  to  its  essential  and  criminal  ele- 
ments. It  is  equally  evident  that  the  increment  of 
wealth  resulting  from  the  obedience  of  laborers  to  in- 
junctions which  do  not  emanate  from  themselves  is 

53 


produced  by  the  man  who  gives  the  injunctions,  and 
not  by  the  men  who  obey  them. 

The  absolute  practical  validity  of  this  method  of 
argument  and  calculation  will  be  yet  more  apparent  if 
we  consider  the  nature  of  practical  reasoning  generally 
when  it  takes  the  form  of  a  discussion  as  to  causes  and 
effects  of  any  kind.  In  the  strict  sense  of  the  word 
"causes,"  it  would  plainly  be  quite  impossible  to  specify 
fully  the  causes  of  any  effect — even  the  simplest.  The 
motion,  for  instance,  of  a  cricket  ball  when  it  leaves 
the  bowler's  hand  would,  infany  discussion  of  the  game, 
be  said  to  have  been  caused  by  the  action  of  the  bowler's 
muscles ;  but  the  entire  antecedents  and  conditions 
which  have  rendered  this  effect  possible  comprise  not 
only  the  action  of  his  muscles  on  this  special  occasion, 
but  his  whole  past  training  as  a  cricketer,  the  history 
of  cricket  itself,  his  progenitors  from  whom  he  derived 
his  constitution,  the  law  of  gravitation,  and,  indeed,  we 
may  say  the  whole  history  of  the  physical  universe.  It 
would  be  impossible  and  absolutely  useless  to  take  cog- 
nizance of  all  these.  When  we  say,  with  regard  to  any 
practical  matter  whatsoever,  that  any  one  thing  is  the 
cause  of  anything  else,  we  are  always  selecting  that 
cause  out  of  an  infinite  number  on  which,  for  the  pur- 
pose in  hand,  it  is  practically  necessary  that  we  should 
insist;  and  the  cause  on  which  it  is  necessary  to  insist 
is  always  distinguished  from  the  others  by  the  fact 
that,  under  the  circumstances  in  view,  it  is  a  cause  or 
condition  which  may  or  may  not  be  present — which  we 
ourselves  may  introduce  or  fail  to  introduce  by  our  own 
action,  or  which,  if  present  already,  our  own  action  may 
eliminate;  or  the  presence  or  continuance  of  which  is 
for  some  reason  doubtful  to  us ;  while  those  other  causes 
whose  presence  is  assumed  by  all  parties  to  the  discus- 
sion, and  which  no  one  proposes  to  take  away,  and 
which  no  one  is  able  to  take  away,  are  passed  over  in 
silence,  for  there  is  no  need  to  take  account  of  them. 
Thus  we  all  know  that  when  a  house  is  burned  to  the 

54 


ground,  the  causes  of  the  occurrence  comprise  the  in- 
flammable nature  of  timber,  and,  indeed,  the  whole 
chemistry  of  combustion;  but  if  an  insurance  office  is 
disputing  the  owner's  claim  to  compensation  on  the 
ground  that  the  owner  set  a  light  to  it  purposely,  while 
the  owner  maintains  that  a  housemaid  set  it  alight  by 
accident,  the  only  causes  that  will  be  put  forward  by 
the  litigants  will  be,  let  us  say,  a  lamp,  alleged  by  the 
owner  to  have  been  upset  accidentally  in  the  basement, 
and  a  match,  on  the  other  hand,  which  is  alleged  by  the 
agent  of  the  insurance  office  to  have  been  applied  by 
the  owner  intentionally  to  the  drawing-room  curtains. 
Here,  again,  is  another  case.  A  man  is  hanging  by  a 
rope,  which  is  fastened  to  a  spike  of  rock,  and  he  is 
looking  for  sea  birds'  eggs  on  the  face  of  a  sheer  cliff. 
It  is  suddenly  perceived  by  some  of  his  friends  on  the 
summit  that  the  rope  is  frayed  a  yard  or  two  above  his 
head.  They  are  anxious  for  his  safety;  and  if  anybody 
asked  them  why,  they  would  answer,  "Because  his  life 
depends  on  the  rope's  not  breaking."  Let  us  suppose, 
however,  that  the  rope  is  perfectly  sound,  but  that  the 
spike  of  rock  to  which  it  is  attached  shows  signs  of 
being  about  to  fall.  The  man's  friends,  in  that  case, 
will  explain  their  anxiety  by  saying  that  his  life  de- 
pends not  on  the  rope,  but  on  the  rock.  In  either  case 
it  would  literally  depend  on  both,  and  on  a  thousand 
other  things  as  well ;  but  in  either  case  one  cause  only 
is  mentioned  or  calls  for  mention,  and  that  is  the  cause 
or  factor  whose  continuance  or  cessation  is  alone  open, 
under  the  circumstances,  to  any  practical  question. 

For  similar  reasons,  and  in  a  similar  sense,  the  able 
minority  of  men  who  direct  the  labor  of  the  majority 
are  the  true  producers  of  that  amount  of  wealth  by 
which  the  total  annual  output,  in  any  given  community, 
exceeds  what  would  have  been  produced  by  the  laborers 
if  left  to  their  own  devices,  whether  working  as  isolated 
units  or  in  small  self-organized  groups.  The  action  of  the 
average  laborers  is  no  doubt  as  essential  to  the  produc- 

55 


tion  of  the  increment,  as  it  is  to  the  production  of  a 
minimum  product  such  as  this ;  but  it  is  not  the  cause  of 
the  increment.,  or  of  the  DIFFERENCE  between  the  two 
products,  in  any  practical  sense ;  for  while  the  product 
changes  the  labor  remains  the  same,  and  there  is  no  ques- 
tion of  its  ceasing  unless  the  laborers  cease  to  exist. 
There  never  can  be  a  question  of  the  directing  faculties  of 
the  few  being  left  alone  in  a  world  where  there  is  no 
compulsory  labor — for  nature,  our  eternal  taskmaster,  is 
always  present  with  her  unrelenting  lash;  but  there  is 
constantly  a  question,  when  the  security  of  social  in- 
stitutions is  threatened,  of  labor's  being  withdrawn  from 
the  efficient  guidance  of  ability;  or,  in  other  words,  of 
the  action  of  ability  being  temporarily  suspended  alto- 
gether. The  application  or  the  nonap plication  of  the 
directing  faculties  to  the  labor  of  the  majority,  which 
labor  is  bound  to  continue  in  any  case — these  are  the 
sole  alternatives.  When  these  faculties  are  thus  applied, 
the  output  of  wealth  increases ;  when  their  application  is 
interfered  with  or  ceases,  the  output  of  wealth  declines ; 
and  in  the  only  practical  sense  of  the  words,  cause  or 
producer,  these  faculties,  or  the  persons  who  exercise 
them,  are  the  true  causes  or  producers  of  the  whole  of 
that  portion  of  the  wealth  of  any  community  which 
comes  into  being  with  their  activity,  and  disappears  or 
dwindles  with  their  inaction. 

Let  me  give  you  two  examples  of  this  reasoning,  as 
applied  to  actual  facts.  One  of  the  commonest  occur- 
rences in  the  world  of  business  is  that  a  great  pro- 
ductive industry  is  developed  and  prospers  under  the 
direction  of  some  talented  founder.  He  dies,  and  the 
business  passes  into  other  hands,  and  though  it  may 
continue  to  succeed  for  some  time  after  his  death, 
owing  to  the  momentum  which  his  talents  had  imparted 
to  it,  it  gradually  declines,  and  is  superseded  by  com- 
petitors, whose  ability  is  superior  to  those  of  the  men 
who  in  his  own  business  have  succeeded  him.  Let  me 
now  give  you  an  example,  on  a  larger  scale,  of  the 

56 


converse  process — that  in  which  the  ability  of  the  men 
by  whom  labor  is  directed,  in  spite  of  individual  fail- 
ures, is  on  the  whole  maintained.  In  Great  Britain, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  aver- 
age income  that  would  have  come  to  each  family,  if  the 
entire  wealth  of  the  country  had  been  pooled  and  di- 
vided equally,  would  have  been,  statisticians  estimate, 
about  four  hundred  dollars,  or  eighty  English  pounds. 
Eighty  years  later,  the  total  actually  paid  in  wages  to 
manual  labor,  would,  if  equally  divided,  have  given 
each  family  an  income  of  about  four  hundred  and  eighty 
dollars.  Thus  wage  earners  of  England  as  a  whole, 
though  they  worked  for  shorter  hours,  actually  divided 
among  themselves  more  wealth  per  head  than  would 
have  been  theirs  if  the  entire  possessions  of  every  capi- 
talist and  landowner  had  been  made  over  to  them  in 
perpetuity  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Here  we  have,  from  the  laborers'  point  of  view,  a 
most  remarkable  object  lesson  as  to  the  effects  of  the 
increasing  concentration  of  Ability  on  the  operations 
of  labor  itself.  To  return  to  a  simile  I  made  use  of  on 
a  former  occasion,  the  higher  the  quality,  and  the  more 
intense  the  action  of  the  exceptional  Ability  to  whose 
guidance  labor  submits  itself,  the  larger  is  the  volume 
of  water  pumped  up  into  the  reservoir  from  which 
wealth  is  distributed  to  the  various  members  of  the 
community;  and  so  far  is  Ability  to-day  from  stealing 
the  water  pumped  up  by  itself,  that  it  is  by  this  time 
appropriating  an  increasing  quantity  of  the  water 
the  supply  of  which  is  due  wholly  to  Ability.  In  other 
words,  though  in  a  great  variety  of  details  the  existing 
order  of  things  requires  detailed  improvement,  the 
whole  material  source  or  fund  from  which  material  im- 
provements can  be  drawn,  consists  in  those  additions  to 
the  national  wealth,  and  the  continued  sustentation  of 
additions  achieved  already,  which  are  due  to  the  activ- 
ity of  that  minority,  operating  by  means  of  capital, 
whose  powers  and  functions  are  ignored  by  the  popu- 

57 


lar  socialism  of  Karl  Marx,  and  whose  means  of  oper- 
ation would  be  taken  from  them  by  the  socialism  of  Mr. 
Sidney  Webb. 

To  this  latter  question — to  the  socialism  of  the  new 
socialists — I  shall  refer  again  in  greater  detail,  when  I 
next  have  the  privilege  of  addressing  you. 


LECTURE  IV. 

As  I  have  already  pointed  out,  the  original  teaching 
of  the  socialists,  when  socialism  began  to  assume  the 
character  of  a  reasoned  system,  as  it  did  under  the  in- 
fluence of  Marx,  and  thus  acquired  the  watchwords 
which  first  made  it  widely  popular,  was  that  wealth 
belongs,  as  a  matter  of  natural  justice,  to  those  persons 
who  produce  it;  that  anyone  who  appropriates  what  he 
has  not  produced  is  a  robber ;  and  that,  since  labor,  or 
the  ordinary  manual  efforts  of  the  great  masses  of  man- 
kind, alone  produces  all  the  wealth  that  exists,  all 
wealth  ought  in  justice  to  go  to  the  great  masses  of 
mankind.  And  this  remains  at  this  moment  the  really 
popular  gospel  of  socialism — the  teaching  on  which  its 
propagandists  still  rely  when  they  seek  adherents  among 
the  wage-earning  classes  generally.  You  will  have  seen, 
however,  from  certain  of  the  arguments  of  the  more 
recent  socialistic  thinkers,  which  we  were  considering 
when  I  last  addressed  you — notably  from  those  of  Mr. 
Sidney  Webb — that  the  more  thoughtful  socialists  have 
been  gradually  growing  conscious  of  the  fallacy  of  that 
primary  economic  doctrine  which  they  once  accepted  as 
an  axiom — namely,  that  the  sole  producer  of  wealth  is 
the  labor  of  the  average  man.  They  are  beginning  to 
see  that  labor  does  not  only  not  produce  all  wealth,  but 
that,  under  certain  circumstances,  it  does  not  even  pro- 
duce most  of  it;  and  being  still  determined  to  pro- 
claim that  the  laborers  have  a  right  to  the  possession  of 
it,  they  are  beginning  to  shift  their  ground,  and  are 
seeking  to  place  this  doctrine  on  some  totally  new  foun- 
dation. So  long  as  it  was  possible  for  them  to  pro- 
claim, without  fear  of  contradiction,  that  no  one  pro- 
duced wealth  except  the  manual  laborer,  it  was  all  very 
well  to  argue  that,  because  the  laborer,  A,  has  produced 
wealth  to  the  value  of  one  hundred  dollars,  therefore 

59 


this  hundred  dollars  is  in  justice  A's  absolute  prop- 
erty; but  now,  when  they  are  gradually  perceiving  that 
the  monopolists  of  business  ability — to  use  Mr.  Webb's 
own  phrase  again — are  man  for  man  producers  on  an 
incomparably  greater  scale,  and  that  any  one  of  them, 
B,  may  produce  one  thousand  dollars  in  a  far  less  time 
than  it  takes  A  to  produce  one  hundred,  they  are  be- 
ginning to  fight  shy  of  the  principle  of  justice  with 
which  they  started — the  sacred  principle  that  the  prod- 
uct belongs  to  the  producer;  for  if  A,  because  he  pro- 
duced them,  has  a  right  to  his  one  hundred  dollars,  B, 
because  he  has  produced  them,  would  have  the  same 
right  to  his  thousand  dollars,  and  this  is  the  precise 
conclusion  against  which  the  socialists  are  at  war. 
They  are,  therefore,  though  they  have  not  yet  openly 
admitted  the  fact,  trying  to  found  their  demand  for  an 
equal  distribution  of  wealth,  not  on  the  rights  of  the 
laborer,  in  his  economic  capacity,  as  the  personal  pro- 
ducer of  the  wealth  which  it  is  proposed  to  give  him, 
but  on  his  moral  rights  as  a  man — as  one  human  being 
among  many,  who  together  constitute  a  community. 
Men,  it  is  argued,  whatever  their  congenital  inequali- 
ties, resemble  each  other,  in  virtue  of  their  common 
humanity,  far  more  than  they  differ  from  each  other  in 
virtue  of  their  unequal  efficiencies.  Let  their  efficiencies 
be  great  or  small,  they  are  not  themselves  the  authors  of 
them.  Their  efficiencies,  be  they  great  or  small,  depend 
alike  on  conditions,  past  and  present,  which  are  beyond 
their  individual  control,  and  which  they  all  of  them 
share  in  common ;  and,  though  the  absolute  results  of 
the  efforts  of  individuals  will  vary,  the  efforts  of  each, 
relatively  to  his  powers,  will  be  equal.  Thus,  for  the 
formula  of  Marx — To  each  man  according  to  his 
products,  and  the  products  of  all  laborers  are  equal — 
the  socialists  of  to-day  are  endeavoring  to  substitute 
this — Let  each  man  produce  according  to  his  economic 
capacity,  and  enjoy  the  products  according  to  his  human 
needs.  This  is  the  practical  outcome  of  the  arguments 

60 


of  such  persons  as  Mr.  Webb,  when  they  endeavor  to 
exhibit  ability  as  a  species  of  unearned  increment — 
arguments  which,  taken  by  themselves,  are,  as  we  have 
seen,  ridiculous,  but  which  acquire  a  sort  of  plausibil- 
ity when  they  lose  their  details,  and  merge  themselves 
in  an  appeal  to  some  general  moral  sentiment.  This 
new  position  of  the  socialists — this  alternative  string 
to  their  bow — for,  when  addressing  the  vulgar,  they 
still  keep  to  the  old  one — differs  from  the  old  position — 
the  position  of  Karl  Marx — in  the  following  fundamen- 
tal way.  Marx  based  the  ethics  of  distribution  on  what 
purported  to  be  an  analysis  of  production.  Socialists 
like  Mr.  Webb  are  endeavoring  to  separate  the  two. 
Mr.  Webb  tries  to  represent  it  as  a  matter  of  complete 
indifference  whether  the  directors  of  labor  produce 
more  than  the  laborers  themselves  or  not.  Indeed  he 
allows,  in  his  recent  explicit  admissions,  as  important 
a  role  to  the  employers  as  they  could  possibly  claim  for 
themselves,  and  throws  the  old  socialistic  analysis  of 
production  overboard  altogether.  He  substantially  agrees 
with  the  monopolists  of  business  Ability  that  they  have 
made  the  wealth  which  they  possess.  He  differs  from 
them  only  in  contending  that  they  have  no  right  to 
keep  it;  that  their  present  possession  of  it  is  merely  an 
accident  of  the  situation;  and  that  the  majority  have 
not  only  the  right  and  also  the  power  to  appropriate  it, 
but  to  redivide  it,  on  grounds  of  general  though  not  of 
economic  justice. 

To  declare,  however,  that  this  revolutionary  redivi- 
sion  is  justifiable  on  moral  grounds  is,  it  need  hardly 
be  said,  a  perfectly  useless  proceeding  unless,  besides 
being  just,  the  redivision  is  also  practicable.  We  may 
leave,  therefore,  the  question  of  its  justice  altogether 
on  one  side,  until  we  have  considered  how,  as  practical 
men,  the  socialists  propose  to  bring  the  redivision  about ; 
and  what  are  the  views  taken  by  them  of  society  and 
of  human  nature  which  lead  them  to  look  on  their 
programme  as  really  susceptU>le==e£=aeesniplishment. 

-BB^J 

I  fT     OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 

tt 


This  brings  us  back  to  a  question  at  which,  under 
one  of  its  aspects,  we  have  had  occasion  to  glance  be- 
fore. When  I  was  dealing  with  capital  as  a  factor  in 
modern  production,  I  pointed  out  that  the  distinctive 
and  fundamental  function  performed  by  it  in  the  mod- 
ern world  was  that  of  supplying  the  directors  of  labor 
with  the  means  of  securing  the  technical  obedience  of 
the  laborers,  such  obedience  constituting  the  condition 
on  which  they  received  their  wages.  And  I  pointed 
out,  as  you  may  remember,  at  the  same  time,  that 
socialists,  in  their  constructive  schemes,  though  not  in 
their  popular  rhetoric,  recognized  that  the  same  kind 
of  obedience  would  be  equally  necessary  under  so- 
cialism; only  they  propose  to  enforce  this  obedience 
in  a  wholly  different  way.  The  only  "truly  socialistic 
scheme" — so  says  Mr.  Webb  in  words  which  I  have 
already  quoted — "is  to  make  an  equal  provision  for  the 
maintenance  of  all  an  incident  and  indefeasible  condi- 
tion of  citizenship,  without  any  regard  whatever  to  the 
relative  specific  services  of  different  citizens;  and,  in- 
stead of  leaving  the  rendering  of  the  requisite  services 
to  the  option  of  the  citizen  (as  the  wage  system  does) 
with  the  alternative  of  starvation,  to  require  each  citi- 
zen to  perform  the  part  allotted  to  him,  under  one  uni- 
form law  or  civic  duty,"  just,  says  Mr.  Webb,  as  mil- 
itary service  is  to-day  exacted  from  soldiers. 

Now  if  we  assume  that  the  socialistic  state  can,  by 
some  means  or  other,  secure  all  the  ablest  men  as  the 
official  directors  of  the  labor  of  the  citizens  generally, 
there  is,  as  I  said  before,  nothing  inherently  imprac- 
ticable in  the  proposal  to  guarantee  to  each  laborer 
all  his  necessaries  and  his  comforts  in  any  case,  and 
secure  his  industrial  obedience  by  methods  the  same  as 
those  by  which  military  obedience  is  secured  in  the  case 
of  soldiers.  On  the  contrary,  as  I  said  before,  this 
method  is  one  which  was  practiced  in  the  earliest  civ- 
ilizations known  to  us,  and  was  in  practical  operation 

62 


for  thousands  upon  thousands  of  years.  It  built  the 
walls  of  Babylon.  It  built  the  pyramids  of  Egypt.  It 
raised  the  monstrous  stones  of  Baalbec.  It  was  the 
method  of  slavery.  It  did  not  receive  its  deathblow 
in  the  civilized  world  till  this  country  inflicted  it  within 
the  lifetime  of  living  men.  It  is  this  method  of  securing 
and  controlling  ordinary  labor  that,  on  Mr.  Sidney 
Webb's  admission,  any  system  which  is  "truly  social- 
istic "  would  reintroduce.  If  every  citizen,  whether 
he  is  willing  to  work  or  no,  has  an  indefeasible  right 
to  board,  lodging,  fuel,  and  clothing,  equal  to  those  en- 
joyed by  the  most  industrious  members  of  the  com- 
munity, the  idle  and  the  disobedient  can  be  made  in- 
dustrious and  obedient  by  one  means  only — the  appli- 
cation of  the  lash,  or  by  the  fear  of  it;  or,  if  Mr. 
Webb  and  his  friends  prefer  a  strictly  military  disci- 
pline, by  the  fear  of  irons,  or  the  bullets  of  a  dozen 
rifles.  Whether  this  would  be  preferable  in  the  eyes 
of  a  free  population  to  the  existing  wage  system,  either 
in  point  of  efficiency  or  otherwise,  we  need  not  for  the 
moment  discuss.  It  is  at  all  events  a  method  of  ob- 
taining and  controlling  labor  which  experience  shows 
us  to  be  possible,  and  within  limits  effective.  But  to 
secure  and  control  the  requisite  manual  labor  is,  on 
Mr.  Webb's  admission,  only  half  of  the  task  whjch 
would  lie  before  the  socialistic  state.  The  other  half 
of  the  task,  which  he  recognizes  as  still  more  impor- 
tant, is  to  secure  the  services  of  the  men  by  whom  all 
this  labor  is  to  be  directed — the  men  of  science,  the 
chemists,  the  mathematicians,  the  inventors,  the  men 
of  constructive  imagination,  on  whose  talents  and  gen- 
ius the  productivity  of  ordinary  labor  will  depend.  By 
what  means  will  socialism  secure  the  services  of  such 
men  as  these? 

Here  we  have  to  deal  with  a  problem  which,  for  one 
reason  at  all  events,  if  for  no  other,  is  entirely  different 
from  the  problem  of  ordinary  labor  itself.  To  secure 
from  men  the  exertion  of  their  ordinary  faculties — espe- 

63 


cially  those  of  common  manual  labor — by  positive  coer- 
cion, instead  of  the  inducement  of  wages,  is,  let  me 
repeat,  possible:  but  it  is  possible  for  this  reason  only. 
In  respect  of  the  faculties  embodied  in  ordinary  labor, 
anyone  by  looking  at  another  man  can  tell  how  far  he  is 
possessed  of  them — whether  he  can  trundle  a  wheel- 
barrow, carry  a  hod  of  bricks,  file  a  casting,  hit  a  nail 
on  the  head,  and  so  forth;  and  any  director  of  such 
labor  knows  exactly  the  individual  task  which  he  wishes 
each  laborer  to  perform;  but  in  respect  of  the  faculties 
— not  ordinary  but  exceptional — which  are  essential  for 
the  men  by  whom  labor  is  to  be  successfully  directed, 
both  these  conditions  are  wanting.  It  is  impossible  to 
tell  that  any  man  of  exceptional  ability  possesses  any 
exceptional  faculties  till  he  himself  chooses  to  show 
them;  and  until  circumstances  supply  him  with  some 
motive  for  exerting  them,  he  will  probably  be  unaware 
that  he  possesses  such  faculties  himself.  Moreover,  even 
if  he  gives  the  world  some  reason  to  suspect  their  ex- 
istence, the  world  will  not  know  what  he  can  do  with 
them,  and  consequently  will  not  be  able  to  impose  on 
him  any  definite  task,  until  he  chooses  himself  to  show 
of  what  tasks  he  is  capable.  Any  Scotch  farmer  could, 
by  looking  at  Burns,  have  told  that  he  had  the  makings 
in  him  of  a  sufficiently  good  plowman,  and  have  forced 
him,  under  certain  circumstances,  to  do  so  much  plow- 
ing daily.  Anyone  could  have  told  that  Shakespeare  was 
capable  of  holding  horses  at  the  theater  door,  and  com- 
pelled him  to  hold  them  as  the  condition  of  his  getting 
his  daily  bread:  but  no  one  could  have  compelled 
Burns  or  Shakespeare  to  write  "Auld  Lang  Syne"  or 
"Hamlet."  A  press  gang  could  have  forced  Columbus 
to  labor  as  a  common  seaman:  but  not  the  whole  popu- 
lation of  Europe  could  have  forced  him  to  discover  a 
new  hemisphere;  for  the  mass  of  his  contemporaries, 
until  his  enterprise  proved  successful,  obstinately  refused 
to  believe  that  there  was  a  new  hemisphere  to  discover. 
The  exceptionally  able  men,  therefore,  by  whom  labor 
64 


is  successfully  directed,  and  on  whose  ability  the  wealth 
of  the  world  depends,  would  stand,  with  regard  to  the 
socialistic  state,  in  a  position  fundamentally  different 
from  that  of  the  ordinary  laborer.  His  distinctive  facul- 
ties cannot  be  guessed  at  by  looking  at  him,  by  feeling 
his  muscles,  or  by  watching  his  natural  movements. 
Nothing  as  to  his  exceptional  faculties  can  be  known 
until  he  himself  chooses  to  reveal  them.  He  is  there- 
fore lord  of  his  exceptional  faculties  in  a  way  in  which 
the  common  man  is  not  lord  of  his  common  faculties. 
The  existence  of  the  latter  cannot  be  concealed.  The 
kind  of  work  that  can  be  accomplished  by  these  facul- 
ties is  known  to  everybody;  and  the  community  can, 
by  the  exercise  of  mere  force,  command  the  average 
man  and  make  him  work  like  an  animal;  but  over  the 
exceptional  faculties  of  the  exceptional  man  the  state 
or  the  community  has  no  command  whatever,  except 
what  the  exceptional  man  voluntarily  elects  to  give  it; 
for  the  state  neither  knows  that  the  faculties  exist,  nor 
what  things  the  faculties  can  accomplish,  till  their  pos- 
sessor reveals  the  secret.  He  cannot  be  made  to  reveal 
it.  He  can  only  be  induced  to  do  so;  and  he  can  only 
be  induced  to  do  so  by  a  society  which  for  an  excep- 
tional deed  offers  some  exceptional  reward,  just  as  a 
reward  is  offered  for  evidence  against  some  unknown 
murderer. 

Now  if  &  socialistic  revolution  could  be  brought  about 
suddenly,  there  would  no  doubt  be  a  large  number  of 
men  whose  exceptional  abilities  were  already  well 
known;  and  the  state  might,  no  doubt,  pick  out  these 
particular  men,  and  compel  them  with  some  effect  to 
place  their  knowledge  and  their  talents  at  its  service; 
but  this  situation  would  last  for  a  few  years  only.  These 
men  would  die,  and  their  places  would  have  to  be  taken 
by  a  number  of  other  men  who  at  present  are  children, 
or  who  have  not  yet  been  born,  and  whose  exceptional 
talents  are  in  any  case  altogether  unknown  and  latent. 
How  shall  these  seeds  of  efficiency  be  induced  to  sprout 

65 


and  bloom  by  a  society  whose  cardinal  principle  is  that 
no  one  man  shall  be  allowed  to  receive  a  remuneration 
greater  than  that  which  is  the  indefeasible  right  of  the 
most  worthless? 

It  is  only  fair  to  the  socialists  of  the  new  school  to 
say  that  this  question  has  suggested  itself  even  to  them; 
and  attempts  have  been  made  by  them  during  the  last 
ten  years  to  answer  it.  The  exceptional  man,  it  is  said, 
will  be  motived  to  exceptional  exertion,  in  the  absence 
of  exceptional  remuneration,  in  one  or  other,  or  in  all, 
of  the  four  following  ways:  By  the  rnere  pleasure  of 
"excelling,"  or  by  "the  joy  in  creative  work";  by  the 
satisfaction  which  work  for  others  brings  to  "the  in- 
stincts of  benevolence";  and  lastly  by  the  desire  for  "so- 
cial approval,"  or  the  homage  which  is  called  "honor." 

Now  if  socialists  confined  themselves  to  maintaining 
that  the  desire  of  such  rewards  as  these  constitutes  a 
sufficient  motive  to  exceptional  activity  of  certain  kinds 
in  certain  cases,  they  would  not  only  be  asserting  what 
nobody  else  would  deny,  but  they  would  be  asserting 
nothing  on  which,  as  socialists,  it  is  to  their  own  inter- 
est to  insist.  The  special  proposition  which,  as  social- 
ists, they  aim  at  establishing  is  not  that  certain  kinds 
of  exceptional  men  do  certain  kinds  of  exceptional 
things  in  obedience  to  the  motives  in  question,  but 
that,  because  some  exceptional  men,  such  as  artists, 
philanthropists,  and  soldiers,  are  motived  by  them  to 
activities  of  certain  specific  kinds,  other  exceptional 
men  will  be  motived  by  them  with  equal  certainty  to 
other  activities  of  a  kind  totally  different — namely,  the 
activities  which  result  in  the  production  of  ordinary 
commercial  wealth,  such  as  boots,  staylaces,  trouser 
buttons,  and  frying  pans.  The  motives  on  which  the 
socialists  rely  as  incentives  to  business  ability,  inde- 
pendently of  the  prospect  of  any  business  reward,  are 
fairly  summed  up  by  the  socialistic  writer  whose  phrases 
I  have  just  been  quoting,  as  the  joy  of  excelling,  the 
joy  in  creative  work,  the  desire  to  benefit  others,  and 
66 


the  desire  of  approbation  and  of  honor.  That  these 
motives  are  motives  of  extraordinary  power  all  history 
shows  us.  The  most  impressive  things  accomplished  by 
human  nature  have  been  due  to  them.  But  let  us  con- 
sider what  these  things  are.  They  are  not  only  impres- 
sive. They  are  limited  in  number,  and  they  have  no 
connection  whatever  with  the  production  of  ordinary 
wealth.  We  shall  find  that  they  are  referable  to  one  or 
other  of  five  kinds  of  activity — heroism  in  battle,  or  in 
face  of  any  exceptional  danger;  artistic  creation;  the 
pursuit  of  speculative  truth;  what  theologians  call  works 
of  mercy;  and,  lastly,  the  propagation  of  religion.  This 
list,  if  understood  in  its  full  sense,  is  exhaustive.  Such 
being  the  case,  then,  the  argument  of  the  socialists  is  as 
follows — that  because  a  soldier  in  action  will  eagerly 
face  death;  because  a  Fra  Angelico  will  paint  a  Christ 
or  a  Virgin;  because  a  Kant  will  immolate  all  his  years 
to  philosophy;  because  a  monk  or  a  sister  of  mercy  will 
give  themselves  to  the  victims  of  a  pestilence;  because 
a  missionary  will  face  martyrdom — all  without  any 
thought  of  a  proportionate  pecuniary  reward — the  direc- 
tors of  industrial  labor,  if  only  such  rewards  are  made 
impossible  for  them,  will  at  once  become  amenable  to 
the  motives  of  the  soldier,  the  artist,  the  philosopher, 
the  inspired  philanthropist,  and  the  apostle.  This  is  the 
assertion  which  underlies  the  socialistic  argument;  and 
what  we  have  to  do  is  to  ask  calmly  and  dispassionately 
whether  or  no  this  assertion  is  true.  Is  there  anything 
in  any  evidence  accessible  to  us  which  may  lead  us,  even 
for  a  moment,  to  think  it  true? 

Here  I  will  ask  you  to  observe  how  economics,  in 
the  discussions  of  to-day,  is  compelled  to  extend  its 
scope;  for  this  question  belongs  to  the  domains  of 
psychology,  and  also  of  physiology.  There  are  like- 
nesses between  men  as  there  are  between  dogs  and 
horses,  and  there  are  also  differences.  Are  the  dif- 
ferences in  temperament  and  talent  between  different 
types  of  men  interchangeable  like  the  parts  of  an  auto- 

6? 


mobile  made  by  the  same  maker?  Does  the  fact  that 
a  man  with  the  temperament  of  a  Fra  Angelico  will 
paint  a  Madonna  for  the  mere  love  of  painting  her, 
prove  that  a  man,  in  his  own  way  equally  exceptional, 
will  start  a  factory  for  the  production  of  cheap  frill- 
ing for  petticoats,  without  hopes  of  a  profit  propor- 
tionate to  his  prospective  sales?  Can  we  argue  from 
the  motives  of  the  soldier,  the  thinker,  the  monk,  or 
the  missionary,  to  the  motives  of  the  bootmaker, 
the  maker  of  patent  saucepans,  or  the  constructor  of 
big  hotels?  Anyone  who  has  studied  human  nature 
historically,  or  observed  it  in  the  life  around  him,  will 
dismiss  the  idea,  on  reflection,  as  at  once  groundless 
and  ridiculous. 

Let  us  take  the  motives  supplied  by  religious  fervor 
and  by  benevolence.  These  have  led,  among  masses 
of  men,  to  conduct  of  the  most  exceptional  kind.  They 
led  the  great  St.  Francis,  and  his  more  immediate 
followers,  to  a  life  of  effort  whose  object  was  not  only 
not  wealth,  but  was  on  the  contrary  their  union  with 
poverty,  as  their  sacred  sister.  But  even  in  the  days 
when  Christian  piety  was  at  its  height,  the  rule  of 
St.  Francis  was  found  practicable  by  a  minority  only. 
One  might  as  well  argue  that,  because  there  have 
been  multitudes  of  monks,  the  celibate  and  the  clois- 
tered life  will  one  day  be  made  universal,  as  one 
may  argue  that  because  some  classes  of  exceptional 
men  will  do,  for  the  mere  love  of  the  thing,  cer- 
tain kinds  of  exceptional  work,  other  classes  of  men 
will,  for  the  same  reason,  do  exceptional  work  of  a 
totally  different  character — that  they  will  produce  ex- 
ceptional wealth,  and  not  expect  a  reward  of  the  same 
order  as  their  products.  Even  the  most  ascetic  of 
the  monastic  orders,  when  they  set  themselves  to 
produce  articles  of  commerce — as  for  instance  the  Car- 
thusians when  they  produce  their  celebrated  liqueur — 
take  care  to  receive  for  each  bottle  the  highest  ex- 
change value  procurable. 

68 


But  the  fanciful  and  foolish  character  of  the  entire 
reasoning  of  the  socialists,  in  this  connection,  is  most 
luminously  illustrated  by  the  example  on  which  they 
themselves  lay  the  greatest  stress.  This  is  the  con- 
duct of  the  soldier,  who  is,  as  they  say,  not  only  will- 
ing but  eager  to  perform  duties  of  the  most  painful 
and  dangerous  character  without  any  thought  of  re- 
ceiving for  it  higher  pay  than  his  fellows.  The  same 
moral  has  been  drawn  from  the  soldier's  case,  not 
by  socialists  only,  but  by  other  distinguished  thinkers, 
for  whom  formal  socialism  was  an  absurdity.  Thus 
Ruskin  says  that  his  whole  scheme  of  political  economy 
was  based  on  the  moral  assimilation  of  industrial  work 
to  military.  "Soldiers  of  the  plowshare,"  he  said,  "as 
well  as  soldiers  of  the  sword.  All  my  political  economy 
is  comprehended  in  that  phrase."  Mr.  Frederic  Har- 
rison, again,  the  prophet  of  English  positivism — who, 
apart  from  his  positivism,  is  a  shrewd  as  well  as  a 
prosperous  busineess  man — has  declared  that  the  readi- 
ness with  which  soldiers  will  die  in  battle,  is  a  type 
of  man's  readiness  to  spend  himself  in  the  peaceful 
service  of  humanity.  Again,  in  a  similar  sense,  an- 
other English  writer  observes,  "The  soldiers'  subsis- 
tence is  certain.  It  does  not  depend  on  his  exer- 
tions. At  once  he  becomes  susceptible  to  appeals  to 
his  patriotism.  He  will  dare  anything  for  glory,  and 
value  a  bit  of  bronze  which  is  the  reward  of  valor, 
far  more  than  a  hundred  times  its  weight  in  gold." 
To  this  passage  one  the  English  socialists  calls  special 
attention,  and  exclaims  triumphantly,  "Let  those  no- 
tice this  last  point  who  fancy  we  must  wait  till  men 
are  angels  before  socialism  be  practical." 

Now  to  all  these  ideas  and  arguments  there  is  one 
answer  to  be  made.  They  are  all  founded  on  a  failure 
to  perceive  the  fact  that  military  activity  is  in  many 
respects  a  thing  apart,  and  depends  on  psychological 
and  physiological  conditions  which  have  no  analogies 
in  the  domain  of  ordinary  economic  effort.  That  such 
69 


is  the  case  can  be  very  easily  seen  by  following  out 
the  train  of  reasoning  suggested  by  Mr.  Frederic  Har- 
rison. Mr.  Harrison  sees  that  in  ordinary  life  a  man 
will  not  deliberately  run  the  risk  of  being  killed  or  mu- 
tiliated,  unless  for  the  sake  of  some  object  the  achieve- 
ment of  which  is  profoundly  desired  by  him;  and  Mr. 
Harrison,  and  the  other  writers  just  quoted,  assume 
that  this  must  be  the  case  on  the  field  of  battle  also — 
in  other  words  that  the  willingness  of  the  soldier  to 
face  death  results  from,  and  is  a  measure  of,  his  at- 
tachment to  the  country  for  which  he  fights.  And  in 
certain  cases — when  a  country  is  in  desperate  straits^ 
and  everything  hangs  on  the  issue  of  a  single  battle — 
this  inference  is  doubtless  just;  but  that  it  is  not  so 
universally,  and  that  the  willingness  of  the  soldier  to 
confront  death  must  have  some  other  origin  than  an 
attachment  to  the  cause  he  fights  for,  is  shown  by  the 
notorious  fact  that  some  of  the  bravest  and  most  reck- 
less soldiers  ever  known  to  history  have  been  mer- 
cenaries who  would  fight  as  willingly  for  one  country 
as  for  another. 

For  this  peculiarity  in  the  soldier's  conduct  there  are 
two  reasons.  One  is  the  peculiar  character  of  the  cir- 
cumstances in  which  the  soldier  is  placed  on  those 
occasions  when  his  courage  is  most  highly  tried — cir- 
cumtances  which  render  the  attempt  to  evade  peril 
almost  as  difficult  and  often  more  perilous  than  facing 
it,  and  which  in  ordinary  life  would  be  intolerable,  if 
they  did  not  happen  to  be  impossible.  But  the  most  im- 
portant and  the  fundamental  reason  is  this — that  the  in- 
stinct of  fighting  is  inherent  in  the  very  nature  of  the 
dominant  races,  and  will  always  prompt  numbers  to  do, 
for  the  smallest  reward,  what  they  could  hardly,  in  its 
absence,  be  induced  to  do  for  the  largest.  This  in- 
stinct— the  result  of  incalculable  years  of  struggle 
which  has  made  the  human  race  what  it  is — is  no  doubt 
more  controlled  than  formerly,  and  is  not  so  frequently 
roused.  But  it  is  still  there.  It  is  ready  to  quicken  at 

70 


the  mere  sound  of  military  music;  and  the  sight  of 
regiments  marching  stirs  the  most  apathetic  crowd. 
Take  again  the  case  of  schools.  High-spirited  boys 
will  take  the  chance  of  having  their  noses  broken  for 
the  mere  pleasure  of  fighting,  when  they  will  not  risk 
a  headache  for  the  sake  of  learning  their  lessons. 
Here  is  the  reason  why  the  soldier,  though  he  submits 
himself  to  the  most  direct  coercion,  never  considers 
himself,  and  is  never  considered  a  slave;  and  military 
activity  will  never,  as  the  socialists  vainly  fancy,  throw 
any  light  on,  or  present  us  with  any  analogy  to,  the 
kind  of  inducements  essential  to  activity  in  the  field 
of  industry,  till  human  nature  undergoes  so  radical  a 
change  that  men  would  as  eagerly  rush  to  build  a 
house,  while  bricks  were  falling  all  about  them  like 
snowflakes,  and  killing  every  tenth  man,  as  the  Japa- 
nese risked  death  by  a  bullet  or  a  bayonet  on  the 
field  of  battle. 

I  have  dwelt  on  this  particular  point,  partly  because 
it  is  one  to  which  socialists  attach  such  extreme  im- 
portance; partly  because  it  affords  us  an  exceptionally 
striking  illustration  of  the  reckless,  the  superficial, 
and  unscientific  manner  in  which  they  are  accustomed 
to  reason.  One  of  the  principal  grounds  on  which 
they  attack  what  they  call  the  economics  of  the  capi- 
talist classes,  is  that  it  deals  solely  with  the  actions  of 
what  is  called  the  economic  man,  or  the  man  whose 
one  motive  is  the  personal  acquisition  of  wealth.  Such 
a  man,  they  say,  is  an  abstraction.  He  does  not  exist 
in  reality.  The  actual  man  is  a  complex  being,  whose 
selfish  and  acquisitive  motives  are  traversed  by  many 
others ;  and  if  economics  is  to  have  any  scientific  value, 
it  must  deal  with  man  as  a  whole,  in  all  his  living  com- 
plexity. The  argument  in  itself  is  true  as  a  criticism  of 
the  orthodox  economists ;  but  when  the  socialists  at- 
tempt to  act  in  accordance  with  their  own  professed 
principles,  and  take  the  whole  of  human  nature  into 
account,  they  do  nothing  but  travesty  the  precise  class 


of  errors  which  they  condemn.  The  one-motived  man 
who  cares  only  for  personal  gain  is  no  doubt  an  ab- 
straction, which  has  no  actual  concrete  counterpart; 
but  the  motive  ascribed  to  him  is  a  motive  which  has  a 
real  existence,  and  by  considering  its  effects  in  isola- 
tion we  can  reach  many  true  conclusions.  But  the 
other  motives  with  which  the  socialists  attempt  to  sup- 
plement this  are  so  vague,  so  indefinite,  so  fantastic, 
that  they  correspond  to  nothing.  Instead  of  being  any 
true  addition  to  the  data  of  economic  science,  they  are 
like  images  belonging  to  a  nebulous  and  sentimental 
dream,  which  have  only  the  effect  of  obscuring,  not 
of  completing,  the  facts  of  human  nature  to  which  the 
orthodox  economists  confine  themselves,  and  which 
though  imperfect,  are  so  far  as  they  go  actual.  The 
psychology  of  the  socialists  makes  no  attempt  whatever 
to  define  the  scope  and  the  operations  of  the  motives 
with  which  it  affects  to  deal ;  and  throws  no  more 
light  on  the  real  facts  of  human  nature  than  a  child's 
painting  of  a  mountain  would  throw  on  its  geological 
formation. 

Now,  however,  without  getting  out  of  touch  with  the 
socialists,  let  us  get  back  to  firmer  ground;  and  hav- 
ing seen  the  futility  of  their  efforts  to  provide,  on  a 
socialistic  basis,  any  motive  which  shall  stimulate  the 
higher  industrial  efficiencies,  other  than  that  supplied 
at  the  present  time  by  the  prospect  of  possessing  wealth 
in  proportion  to  the  amount  produced,  let  us  consider 
this  motive  itself,  as  history  and  experience  reveal  it  to 
us.  And  here  in  presence  of  facts  which  no  one  seeks 
to  deny,  we  shall  find  that  the  socialists  are  among  our 
most  important  witnesses.  The  motive  in  question  on 
the  part  of  the  exceptional  wealth  producer,  the  capi- 
talist employer,  the  man  of  enterprise  and  business 
ability — namely,  the  desire  of  wealth  proportionate  to 
his  exceptional  production  of  it— commonly  receives 
from  the  socialists  the  vituperative  name  of  greed. 
We  will  not  be  squeamish  over  a  name,  and,  to  avoid 

72 


quarreling  over  trifles,  we  will,  for  the  moment,  adopt 
this  name  ourselves.  It  will  show  that  we  and  the 
socialists,  are  talking  about  the  same  thing.  The  so- 
cialists maintain  that  greed  will  be  superfluous  as  a 
motive  in  the  future ;  but  what  have  they  got  to  tell 
us  about  its  operaion  in  the  present  and  the  past? 
They  tell  us  a  great  deal.  For  what,  as  moral  and 
political  agitators,  has  been  their  chief  moral  indict- 
ment against  the  typical  man  of  ability,  the  director  of 
labor,  the  introducer  of  new  machinery  and  new  meth- 
ods, the  pioneer  of  commerce?  Their  chief  indictment 
against  men  such  as  this  has  been  that,  instead  of  work- 
ing for  the  mere  pleasure  of  benefiting  their  fellows, 
or  for  the  sake  of  any  other  of  those  rewards  which 
the  socialists  declare  to  be  so  satisfying,  their  one 
motive  has  been  greed  and  selfish  greed  alone.  Its 
hideous  influence,  they  say,  is  as  old  as  civilization 
itself,  and  the  monopolists  of  business  ability  in  Tyre 
and  Sidon  were  as  much  its  creatures  as  are  their  mod- 
ern representatives  in  Berlin,  London,  or  Pittsburg. 
Here  we  get  to  something  like  solid  rock;  for  this  as- 
sertion, unlike  so  many  made  by  the  socialists,  has  the 
refreshing  advantage  of  being  substantially  true.  Just 
as  the  desire  of  winning  a  woman  is  associated  with 
the  act  of  making  love  to  her,  so  is  the  desire  of  pos- 
sessing wealth  associated  with  the  act  of  producing  it. 
The  only  defect  of  this  assertion  is  a  defect  of  the 
last  kind  that  one  would  naturally  look  for  in  those 
who  denounce  the  narrowness  of  the  orthodox  econo- 
mists on  the  ground  that  they  confine  themselves  to 
a  consideration  of  the  one-motived  economic  man. 
For  not  even  Mill  or  Ricardo  would  have  maintained 
that  actual  human  beings  had  no  other  desires  in  life 
than  to  make  as  much  money  as  possible.  They  would 
have  granted  them,  in  theory  at  all  events,  some  benevo- 
lent and  unselfish  feelings.  But  when  we  turn  to  the 
analysis  invariably  given  by  the  socialists  of  the  char- 
acters of  all  the  men  of  business  ability  who  have  ex- 

73 


erted  themselves  in  the  world  hitherto,  we  find  that 
even  on  occasions  when  these  men  have  given  most 
remarkable  signs  of  apparent  sympathy  with  others, 
the  socialists  have  been  ready  to  denounce  them  as 
nothing  better  than  hypocrites,  and  declare  that  greed 
was  their  motive— unadulterated  greed  only.  Thus,  when 
the  liberal  manufacturers  of  Great  Britain,  about  sixty 
years  ago,  advocated  and  aided  in  securing  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  corn  laws,  declaring  themselves  desirous 
thereby  to  ameliorate  the  lot  of  the  people,  and  pro- 
vide cheap  bread  for  the  thousands  who  were  famish- 
ing for  the  want  of  it,  Karl  Marx,  who  was  then  in 
England,  declared  that  the  sole  motive  by  which  these 
men  were  really  actuated  was  the  desire  to  reduce 
wages,  and  thus  add  to  their  own  profits. 

Now  this  assertion  of  the  socialists  does  contain  an 
element  of  truth;  but  the  truth  to  which  it  bears  wit- 
ness, when  shorn  of  its  exaggerations,  is  this — not  that 
men  of  business  ability,  and  the  great  directors  of  in- 
dustry, either  are  at  present,  or  ever  have  been  in  the 
past,  motived,  as  concrete  human  beings,  by  no  other 
desire  than  greed;  but  that  this  motive  is,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  essential  to,  and  psychologically  inseparable 
from,  their  activity  as  men  of  business;  just  as,  on  the 
socialists'  own  admission,  joy  in  creation  is  insepara- 
ble from  highest  art  of  the  painter  or  the  love  of  some 
woman  from  the  lover's  efforts  to  win  her,  though  no 
artist  or  lover  ever  lived  who  had  not  many  motives 
unconnected  with  his  paint  box  or  his  sonnets  to  his 
mistress's  eyebrow. 

When  we  are  considering  men  as  persons  who  can 
render  some  specific  service,  we  have  to  consider  their 
characters  with  reference  to  that  specific  service  only. 
The  specific  service  here  in  question  is  the  exceptional 
production  of  wealth  on  the  part  of  exceptional  men; 
and  the  whole  question  we  are  now  debating  is  merely 
how  a  society  which  was  organized  on  socialistic  prin- 
ciples, and  whose  distinctive  aim  was  to  deny  to  these 

74 


exceptional  men  any  wealth  proportionate  to  the  excep- 
tional amount  produced  by  them,  will  be  able  to  secure 
their  services,  which  the  socialists  admit  to  be  essen- 
tial. That  they  will  not  give  their  services,  that  they 
will  not  even  develop  their  special  faculties,  without  a 
motive  of  some  sort,  is  admitted  by  the  socialists  them- 
selves. What  is  that  motive  to  be?  And  the  socialists 
themselves  declare  more  vehemently  than^anybody  that, 
so  far  as  our  knowledge  of  the  past  and  our  experience 
of  the  present  can  inform  us,  the  class  of  men  in  ques- 
tion, in  respect  of  their  economic  activities,  are  amen- 
able to  one  motive  only — namely,  a  desire  for  a  share  of 
wealth  proportionate  to  the  amount  produced  by  them; 
and  this  is  the  precise  desire  that  socialism  would  refuse 
to  satisfy.  In  supposing,  then,  as  they  do,  and  as  they 
are  obliged  to  do,  that  some  other  motive  in  the  future 
will  take  the  place  of  this,  they  are  supposing  that  hu- 
man nature  will,  in  some  comparatively  short  time, 
undergo  a  change  to  which  history,  on  their  own  ex- 
press admission,  affords  no  parallel,  and  that  certain 
traits  will  disappear  from  certain  types  of  character, 
which  all  the  revolutions  and  movements  of  human  life 
have,  on  their  own  admission,  done  absolutely  nothing 
to  modify,  from  the  earliest  dawn  of  civilization  up  to 
the  present  day. 

It  is  a  very  curious  fact  that  those  enthusiasts  who  are 
most  eloquent  in  declaring  that  this  change  will  be 
easy,  are  the  vj^  persons  who  are  most  vehement  in 
proclaiming^^^hiju^r  there  has  never  been  a  single 
sign  of  it.  ^J^Bfvequoted  the  declaration  of  Marx, 
made  in  England  about  sixty-five  years  ago,  to  the 
effect  that  the  men  whose  ability  was  at  that  time  in 
England  increasing  the  production  of  wealth  as  it  had 
never  been  increased  before,  not  only  had  greed  for 
their  sole  industrial  motive,  but  were  susceptible  of  no 
other.  I  will  now  give  you  one  of  the  latest  utterances 
of  a  distinguished  living  thinker,  who,  though  differing 
from  most  socialists  in  many  of  his  moral  ideals,  is  en- 

75 


tirely  at  one  with  them  in  their  distinctive  economic 
principles.  I  refer  to  Count  Tolstoy,  whose  name  I 
mentioned  in  one  of  my  previous  lectures.  He,  too, 
like  socialists  of  the  school  of  Marx,  declares  that  ordi- 
nary manual  labor  is  the  source  of  all  wealth.  At  the 
same  time  he,  too,  like  socialists  such  as  Mr.  Sidney 
Webb,  recognizes  that  some  men  are  much  more  effi- 
cient than  others;  and,  with  regard  to  these  men,  he 
says  that  so  long  as  they  continue  to  do  what  they  do 
now,  and  have  always  done  in  the  past — namely,  to 
expect  that  their  exceptional  efficiencies  shall  be  re- 
warded with  exceptional  possessions — "  then  inevitably 
whatever  organization  may  be  introduced,  society  will 
form  a  cone,  and  the  most  efficient  men  will  be  at  the 
top  of  it."  "Therefore,"  he  says,  "all  that  is  now  neces- 
sary for  the  deliverance  of  men  from  their  sufferings  is 
that  they  should  emancipate  themselves"  from  their 
present  motives,  and  that  each  man,  instead  of  seeking 
to  possess  in  proportion  to  what  he  produces,  should 
obey  that  "eternal  law  which  gives  the  highest  possible 
social  welfare"  indiscriminately  to  "all  everywhere." 

This  is  all  that  is  required,  he  says;  and  he  speaks  of 
it  as  a  trifling  change.  It  is  a  change,  however,  which 
unintentionally  he  invests  with  a  very  different  aspect, 
when,  in  another  passage  remarkable  for  its  shrewdness 
and  candor,  he  explains  his  meaning  further.  For  the 
motives,  he  says,  which  are  at  present  operative  among 
the  capitalist  on  a  large  scale  are  ^^>resent  univer- 
sally operative  among  the  masspf  men  on  a  small 
scale.  "Any  laborer,"  he  procefB^"*^H^er  educated 
or  quite  illiterate,  is  ready  to  express  his  indignation 
with  the  capitalist,  and  denounce  the  whole  existing 
organization  of  society  as  wrong ;  and  yet,"  says  Count 
Tolstoy,  "give  this  laborer,  be  he  educated  or  unedu- 
cated, the  opportunity  of  bettering  his  position  by  pro- 
ducing certain  articles  cheaper  than  others,  or  of  buying 
land,  or  of  organizing  a  business  with  wage-paid  labor 
himself,  and  in  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  cases  out 

76 


of  a  thousand  he  will  do  it  without  scruple  and  defend 
his  possession  of  the  land,  or  his  privileges  as  an  em- 
ployer, often  more  strenuously  than  the  born  landlords 
and  capitalists." 

What  Count  Tolstoy  says  here  is  no  more  than  the 
truth.  The  exceptional  man's  motive — namely,  his  de- 
sire for  exceptional  possessions — is  merely  the  devel- 
oped form  of  a  motive  common  to  all  men;  namely,  the 
desire  of  receiving,  as  the  result  of  personal  effort,  an 
amount  of  wealth  which  is,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  not 
so  small  as  to  be  grossly  disproportionate  to  the 
amount  of  wealth  which  the  personal  effort  has  pro- 
duced. In  other  words,  this  motive,  which  Count 
Tolstoy  proposes  to  abolish,  is,  on  his  own  admis- 
sion, indigenous  to  the  vast  majority  of  mankind.  If 
we  confined  ourselves  to  the  language  of  socialists  like 
Mr.  Sidney  Webb,  the  change  in  motive  essential  to 
the  socialistic  state  would  seem  to  be  a  change  in 
motives  which  were  peculiar  to  the  exceptionally  effi- 
cient minority;  but  Count  Tolstoy  corrects  this  view 
by  his  penetrating  and  twofold  assertion  that  the 
motive  requiring  change  in  the  minority  is  a  motive 
equally  ingrained  in  the  character  of  the  majority  also, 
and  that,  in  order  to  make  a  socialistic  state  possible, 
the  whole  human  race  must  be  remodeled,  and  not 
merely  a  class. 

If  only  such  a  change  in  human  nature  could  be 
accomplished,  a  socialistic  state  of  some  sort  would 
follow  as  a  natural  result.  In  just  the  same  way,  ii 
human  nature  could  be  so  changed  that  men  wanted 
neither  food  or  clothing,  or  that  they  came  into  the 
world  without  any  cooperation  of  the  sexes,  social 
changes  would  follow  of  a  still  more  revolutionary 
kind.  The  economic  constitution  of  society  is,  in  its 
fundamentals,  an  image  or  projection  of  human  char- 
acter in  its  fundamentals;  and  the  one  can  never  be 
changed  fundamentally  until  the  other  is  changed 
fundamentally.  * 

77 


Is  there,  then,  let  us  ask  once  more,  any  sign  in  the 
past  history  of  the  human  race,  or  in  the  conduct 
of  the  men  around  us,  which  may  lead  us  to  think 
that  the  change  now  specially  in  question  is  likely 
to  accomplish  itself  among  human  beings  in  general, 
and  more  particularly  among  those  exceptional  men 
on  whose  services  socialistic  labor  would  depend  for 
its  productivity — no  less  than  does  labor  under  the 
conditions  that. prevail  to-day?  And  to  this  question, 
as  we  may  now  see  on  reflection,  thoughtful  socialists 
give  three  answers.  One  consists  of  those  false  and 
foolish  analogies  which  they  draw  between  kinds  of 
activity,  such  as  the  artistic  and  the  military,  and 
those  involved  in  economic  production,  which  stand 
on  a  footing  in  many  was  wholly  different.  Another 
answer,  to  which  I  have  not  previously  referred,  is 
based  on  a  mood  of  mind  undoubtedly  prevalent  among 
many  of  those  to  whom  the  socialists  mainly  address 
themselves — that  is  to  say,  men  who,  conscious  of 
producing  little,  and  quite  willing  to  produce  less, 
would  be  only  too  glad,  to  the  utmost  extent  pos- 
sible, to  profit  by  the  activities  of  those  who  produce 
more.  Such  men  are  ready  enough  to  affirm,  and 
may  possibly  believe,  that  if  they  were  capable  of  ex- 
ceptional production  personally,  they  would  be  per- 
fectly willing  to  distribute  their  exceptional  products 
among  their  fellows;  and  they  thus  develop  a  volume 
of  unreal  sentiment,  founded  on  mere  fancies  as  to 
what  they  would  do  themselves  if  placed  in  positions 
for  which  all  qualifications  are  wanting  to  them.  Sen- 
timent such  as  this,  which  can  rarely  be  put  to  the 
test,  is  altogether  delusive.  As  Count  Tolstoy  ob- 
serves, and  as  experience  amply  shows,  the  very  men 
who  are  foremost  in  denouncing  as  immoral  and  need- 
less all  desire  for  exceptional  gain  on  the  part  of  the 
employer  and  capitalist,  are  the  very  men  who,  when- 
ever an  opportunity  offers,  are  notoriously  foremost 
in  exhibiting  this  desire  themselves.  The  third  answer 
78 


is  Count  Tolstoy's  own.  Oddly  enough  he  lays  very 
little  emphasis  on  it;  but  it  is  the  only  answer  he 
gives  us,  and  it  is  not  without  its  value.  Though  nine 
hundred  and  ninety-nine  men  out  of  every  thousand, 
be  they  rich  or  poor,  laborers  or  employers  of  labor, 
are  wholly  untouched  at  heart  by  the  motives  which 
are  one  day  to  be  universal,  there  is  a  minority  of  one 
in  a  thousand,  who  already  have  found  salvation,  and 
who  actually  are  prepared  to  exert  their  productive 
faculties  without  any  desire  of  special  or  exclusive 
gain  for  themselves.  Count  Tolstoy  is  undoubtedly 
right  here.  He  knows  from  experience  that  minds  of 
a  certain  class  do  genuinely  respond  to  the  kind  of 
doctrine  that  he  preaches;  and  he  probably  feels  that 
if  this  is  possible  among  some,  the  obstacle  must  be 
trifling  and  removable  which  prevents  its  being  pos- 
sible among  all.  But  if  he  thinks  this,  he  has  read 
history  to  very  little  purpose.  Appeals,  similar  in 
spirit,  though  differing  in  form  from  his  own,  have 
been  made  to  it  any  time  during  the  past  two  thousand 
years;  and  men,  in  response  to  them  all  over  the  world 
have  renounced  both  wealth  and  marriage.  But  the 
reality,  and  the  permanence  of  a  class  willing  to  act 
thus,  shows  us  how  small  it  is  relatively,  and  how 
incapable  of  extension,  though  absolutely  it  may  com- 
prise a  multitude.  The  economic  asceticism  which 
Count  Tolstoy  preaches,  which  he  himself  recognizes 
as  a  condition  of  socialism,  and  which  other  socialists, 
without  recognizing  this,  demand,  is  simply  the  eco- 
nomic counterpart  of  asceticism  of  the  Christian  or 
the  Buddhistic  cloister.  As  such  it  may,  and  indeed 
occasionally  has,  realized  itself  to  some  degree  in  small 
and  detached  communities.  But  the  success  of  most 
of  these  has  been  due  to  the  presence  of  some  master 
mind,  to  which,  on  its  disappearance,  no  adequate  suc- 
cessor has  been  found;  and  the  success  has  not  been 
long,  and  has  certainly  not  been  considerable. 
The  socialistic  principle  has  again,  to  some  extent, 

79 


achieved  .a  practical  expression  in  Great  Britain  in  a 
somewhat  different  way — not  in  secluded  communi- 
ties (but  in  industrial  associations  which  go  by  the 
name  of  cooperative.  The  ideals  which  such  associa- 
tions aim  at  may  be  said  to  be  completely  socialistic. 
The  ideal  of  the  cooperator  is  a  business  firm  in  which 
the  workers  own  the  capital  in  absolutely  equal  shares, 
have  an  equal  voice  in  the  management,  and  draw  each 
an  equal  share  of  the  total  profits  in  lieu  of  wages. 
In  practice,  however,  this  ideal  has  never  been  com- 
pletely realized;  still  a  sufficiently  near  approach  has 
been  made  to  it  to  render  the  fortunes  of  industrial 
cooperation  instructive.  Cooperative  enterprises  have 
been  of  two  contrasted  kinds — those  whose  business 
was  distribution,  and  those  whose  business  was  pro- 
duction; and  between  the  fortunes  of  these  two  there 
has  been  a  most  signal  and  instructive  difference.  The 
distributive  enterprises,  which  have  merely  been  large 
shops,  open  to  members  only,  and  supplying  these 
customers  with  goods  at  prices  below  the  ordinary, 
because  the  profit  of  the  middleman  was  eliminated — 
enterprises  of  this  kind  have  met  with  considerable 
success;  but  cooperative  attempts  to  produce  the 
goods  thus  sold  exhibit  a  notorious  contrast  to  the 
success  that  has  attended  their  distribution,  and  the 
reason  is  evident.  In  the  process  of  producing  a  cheap 
watch,  or  lamp,  or  screwdriver,  or  colored  and  pat- 
terned fabric,  far  more  special  ability,  far  more  me- 
chanical, chemical,  inventive,  and  coordinating  talent 
is  required  than  in  the  process  of,  selling  them;  and 
the  higher  kinds  of  ability — the  main  requisites  of 
production — are  precisely  what  cooperators,  in  pro- 
portion as  they  are  really  cooperative,  find  it  difficult, 
and  generally  impossible,  to  obtain.  We  need  not  go 
into  particulars.  The  general  result  is  written  on  the 
face  of  history.  The  capitalistic  system  began  to  as- 
sume its  modern  form,  as  the  socialists  are  constantly 
telling  us,  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  Co- 
80 


operative  production  was  first  attempted  about  seventy 
years  ago.  In  seventy  years  the  capitalistic  system 
was  dominant  throughout  Great  Britain,  and  was  rap- 
idly spreading  itself  through  Europe,  while  since  that 
time  it  has  become  coextensive  with  civilization.  In 
seventy  years  the  system  of  cooperative  production  has 
met  only  with  success  sufficient  to  be  the  index  of 
its  comparative  insignificance.  It  shows  besides  cap- 
italism as  a  tortoise  shows  besides  an  express  train, 
or  a  plant  of  asparagus  shows  besides  a  towering  oak. 
In  Great  Britain,  for  example,  all  the  productive  busi- 
nesses which  are  cooperative  in  any  socialistic  or  semi- 
socialistic  sense,  might  be  suddenly  extinguished  to- 
day without  any  appreciable  effect  on  the  national 
welfare  as  a  whole.  If  a  similar  fate  overtook  cap- 
italistic production,  the  emtire  nation  would,  in  a  very 
few  days,  be  starving. 

Thus,  if  we  look  ba'ck  over  the  path  which  we  have 
thus  far  traversed,  we  shall  see  that  socialism  has  made 
two  attempts  to  justify  itself — attempts  beginning  at 
opposite  ends  of  the  scale,  (i)  One  is  the  attempt 
of  Marx  and  his  school,  which  represents  ordinary 
manual  labor  as  the  sole  producer  of  wealth.  (2)  The 
other  is  that  of  the  more  thoughtful  socialists  of  to- 
day, who  more  or  less  clearly  recognize,  though  they 
do  not  openly  say  so,  that  the  Marxian  analysis  or 
production  is  no  better  than  nonsense.  These  men, 
so  far  as  the  machinery  of  production  is  concerned,  are 
coming  round  to  a  view  which  is,  in  many  respects, 
not  to  be  distinguished  from  that  of  their  most  un- 
compromising opponents.  They  are  coming  to  recog- 
nize that  in  the  modern  process  of  production  the 
few  play  a  part  even  greater  than  that  played  by  the 
many — that  the  labor  of  the  many  is  the  unit  which 
the  ability  of  the  few  multiplies;  and  the  only  radical 
change  which  these  modern  socialists  would  intro- 
duce is  a  change  in  the  character  of  the  motives  by 
which  this  ability  is  first  to  be  elicited,  and  then  tfept 
81 


in  a  state  of  sustained  activity.  With  the  doctrine  of 
Marx,  that  all  wealth  is  due  to  ordinary  manual  labor 
and  that  capital  represents  mere  passive  monopoly, 
used  as  an  instrument  of  plunder — a  doctrine  which  is 
still  the  foundation  of  socialism  as  a  popular  creed — 
I  dealt  fully  at  starting,  exposing  its  fallacies  in  detail. 

Then  the  neo-socialistic  doctrine,  which  recognizes 
the  functions  of  ability,  but  maintains  that  the  mo- 
nopoly of  ability  can  be  practically  broken  down  by 
simply  depriving  ability  of  its  present  motives  to  ex- 
ertion, has  been  occupying  our  attention  to-day;  and 
we  have  seen  that  it  is  just  as  unscientific,  just  as 
visionary,  just  as  puerile  as  the  other. 

I  will  now  sum  up,  in  general  terms,  the  positive 
conclusions  to  which  our  negative  criticism  as  to  this 
special  point  leads  us. 

Economic  production  depends,  alike  for  its  advance 
and  its  sustenation,  on  a  fact  by  which  the  civilization 
of  to-day  is  distinguished  from  all  civilizations  preced- 
ing it.  This  fact  is  the  concentration  on  the  productive 
process  of  the  mental  and  volitional  activities  of  excep- 
tionally able  men,  to  a  degree  in  which  such  activities 
were  never  concentrated  before.  Such  being  the  case, 
those  countries  or  races  have  advanced  fastest  which, 
besides  being  prolific  in  men  of  exceptional  powers  such 
as  these,  offer  them  the  greatest  inducements  to  develop 
their  powers,  and  the  greatest  facilities  for  applying 
them  in  the  widest  and  most  efficient  way.  And  what 
are  these  inducements? 

I  have  no  reluctance  to  adopt  once  more,  for  the  mo- 
ment, the  word  used  by  socialists  as  a  term  of  con- 
temptuous invective,  and  say  that  they  consist  of  the 
prospect,  secured  by  the  constitution  of  society,  of  satis- 
fying the  exceptional  man's  economic  greed  in  propor- 
tion to  his  economic  productivity.  In  speaking  of  the 
desire  here  in  question  as  greed,  we  do  in  reality  no 
more  to  discredit  it  than  we  do  by  speaking  of  a  man 
whom  we  happen  to  dislike,  as  this  fellow.  The  vitu- 

82 


perative  meaning  of  the  word  is  due  to  its  derivation 
from  greedy,  which  implies  an  inordinate  desire  for  the 
sensual  gratifications  of  eating;  and  the  common  opin- 
ion of  men  unable  to  produce  great  wealth,  as  to  men 
who,  because  they  produce  it,  desire  also  to  possess 
it,  is  that  they  desire  to  possess  it  first  and  foremost 
in  order  that  they  may  constantly  gorge  themselves  with 
the  richest  and  most  unwholesome  food,  or  revel  to 
excess  in  luxuries  of  a  like  kind.  When  a  caricaturist 
desires  to  deride  a  plutocrat,  he  invariably  draws  him 
with  a  swollen  face  and  a  waistcoat  bulging  like  a  bal- 
loon. The  bloated  capitalist  is  a  phrase  that  has  be- 
come proverbial;  and  a  similar  phrase,  belonging  to  an 
earlier  period,  "As  drunk  as  a  lord,"  still  survives  in 
England — the  supposition  being  that  a  lord  was  a  rich 
man,  and  that,  being  a  rich  man,  he  would  drink  as 
much  wine  as  he  could  hold.  And  no  doubt  many  of 
the  men.  who  make  great  fortunes  may  be  taxed  with 
greed  in  this  and  kindred  senses.  But  so  may  men  in 
all  ranks  of  life.  One  man  may  be  as  greedy  over  a 
sausage  as  another  man  is  over  an  ortolan.  A  man  may 
be  as  slothful  in  a  cheap  bed  as  in  a  dear  one.  He  may 
luxuriate  as  idly  in  a  rocking  chair  that  cost  a  couple  of 
dollars  as  he  may  in  a  gilded  fauteuil  which  belonged 
to  Marie  Antoinette,  and  which  cost  perhaps  ten 
thousand. 

The  fact  is  that  greed,  if  we  take  the  word  as  mean- 
ing a  mere  physiological  desire  for  the  direct  indulgence 
of  the  senses,  forms  a  very  small  part  of  the  motive 
which  induces  the  most  selfish  men  to  the  prolonged 
efforts  in  virtue  of  which  they  produce  and  augment 
great  fortunes.  Of  this  fact  there  are  many  incontro- 
vertible proofs.  One  is  that  many  of  the  greatest  wealth 
producers  have  been  men  who,  in  their  personal  ex- 
penditure, have  been  exceptionally  penurious.  Another 
is  that,  when  wealth  is  possessed  on  a  great  scale,  the 
amount  which  the  utmost  ingenuity  could  expend  on 
the  satisfaction  of  personal  greediness  is  comparatively 

83 


small;  and,  in  the  ca*se  of  the  men  who  produce  their 
tens  of  millions,  is  left  far  behind  at  a  very  early  stage 
in  their  career. 

The  desire,  therefore,  of  mere  sensual  satisfaction 
cannot  be  the  main  motive  that  prompts  men  to  the 
production  of  great  wealth.  A  key  to  the  general 
question  of  what  the  main  motive  is  by  which  men  on 
the  whole  are  prompted  to  the  production  of  great 
wealth  is  to  be  found  in  an  observation  of  Ruskin's, 
remarkable  for  its  penetration,  and  for  the  terse  apti- 
tude of  its  language.  We  must,  he  says,  in  consider- 
ing human  motives,  draw  a  sharp  line  between  men's 
"needs"  and  their  "wishes."  Their  needs  are  bounded 
by  the  constitution  of  the  human  body,  and  the  prompt- 
ings of  the  common  affections.  Their  wishes,  which 
make  up  three  fourths  of  their  desires,  are,  on  the  other 
hand,  what  he  calls  "ROMANTIC."  They  depend  on 
imagination,  thought,  and  all  kinds  of  indeterminate 
emotion.  Thus  the  physical  enjoyment  derived  from  the 
scenery  of  a  beautiful  park  is  the  same  for  the  owner, 
and  any  stranger  who  happens  to  wander  in  it.  The 
additional  enjoyment  which  comes  to  the  owner  from 
his  ownership  is  altogether  mental,  imaginative,  or,  as 
Ruskin  says,  romantic.  In  the  same  way  the  posses- 
sion of  wealth  generally,  and  the  desire  to  increase  it, 
mean  an  enlargement  of  the  general  consciousness  far 
more  than  any  titillation  of  the  nerves,  or  the  pamper- 
ing of  any  physical  appetite.  What  are  the  forms  of 
expenditure  most  characteristic  of  the  very  rich  men 
who  have  arisen  in  the  world  to-day?  One  is  cer- 
tainly the  collection  of  works  of  art.  Another,  spe- 
cially noticeable  in  this  country,  is  the  giving  of  great 
sums  to  educational  and  other  public  purposes. 

It  is  impossible  here  to  go  into  this  interesting  sub- 
ject minutely — a  subject  closely  connected  with  the 
economics  of  the  modern  world;  but  the  facts  of  the 
case  may  be  generally  summed  up  in  saying  that  the 
motive  which  stimulates  the  producers  of  great  wealth 

84 


to  demand  a  proportionate  amount  of  their  great  prod- 
ucts for  themselves,  is  not  a  desire  for  pleasure,  but 
a  desire  for  the  realization  of  power;  and  when  this 
fact  is  understood,  the  psychology  of  the  question  be- 
comes perfectly  intelligible.  The  monopolists  of  busi- 
ness ability — to  return  Mr.  Webb's  phrase — are  men 
conscious  of  powers  which  are  at  first  latent  and  in- 
ternal. When  applied  to  the  production  of  wealth, 
these  powers  become  externalized,  developed,  and  re- 
embodied  in  the  wealth  produced  by  them ;  and  when 
thus  reembodied,  they  are  at  their  possessor's  service, 
ready  to  subserve  his  purposes  in  an  indefinite  variety 
of  ways.  Because  very  rich  men  will  so  often  give 
vast  portions  of  their  riches  to  public  purposes  it  may 
seem  to  some  that  they  would  still  go  on  producing,  it, 
instead  of  being  given  away  by  them,  these  sums  were 
taken  from  them  by  the  state.  Here  we  have  another 
example  of  the  puerility  of  socialistic  psychology.  If 
the  sums  in  question  were  taken  instead  of  given,  the 
producer  would  lose  the  one  thing  which  he  primarily 
values  in  the  transaction.  He  would  himself  lose  all 
share  in  it.  It  would  cease  to  be  an  expression  of 
himself.  Let  anyone  who  thinks  that,  because  a  man 
is  willing  to  give  money  away,  he  necessarily  sets  no 
value  on  being  recognized  as  the  rightful  possessor  of 
it,  ask  himself  if,  because  he  is  willing  to  give  a  dol- 
lar to  a  poor  man  in  the  street,  he  would  be  equally 
willing  that  the  stranger  should  steal  it  out  of  his 
coat  pocket. 

In  any  case  the  great  truth  remains  that,  in  propor- 
tion as  men  of  ability  are  essential  to  the  progress  and 
the  sustentation  of  wealth  in  modern  society,  society 
as  a  whole,  if  it  is  to  secure  and  retain  their  services, 
must  concede  to  them  by  its  constitution  the  terms 
that  these  men  desire;  and  what  these  terms  shall  be, 
must  practically  be  decided  not  by  society  as  a  whole, 
but  by  the  exceptional  men  themselves.  Society  as 
a  whole  can  no  more  determine  that  such  and  such  a 

85 


motive  shall  be  sufficient  to  stimulate  certain  people 
than  all  the  fishermen  in  the  world  can  determine,  by 
taking  counsel  together,  that  fish  shall  rise  to  flies 
which  happen  not  to  attract  them. 

Here  we  come  to  another  aspect  of  our  subject — to 
this  question  of  the  limitations  of  the  powers  of  soci- 
ety— a  question  as  to  which  even  many  highly  edu- 
cated thinkers  think  as  loosely,  and  with  as  profound 
an  inaccuracy,  as  they  do  with  regard  to  the  part 
which  ordinary  manual  labor  plays  in  the  production 
of  wealth.  This  question  I  must  deal  with  when  I 
next  address  you. 


86 


LECTURE  V. 

The  belief  that  socialism  represents  a  practicable  form 
of  society — this  is  what  I  ended  with  pointing  out  to 
you  in  my  last  address — rests,  in  the  minds  of  those  per- 
sons who  hold  it,  and  is  defended  by  them,  on  two 
grounds.  One  of  these  is  a  doctrine  relating  to  the  labor 
of  ordinary  men ;  the  other  is  a  doctrine  relating  to  the 
motives  which  will  secure  for  society  the  services  of 
exceptional  men. 

(1)  Popular  socialism — socialism  as  expounded  to  the 
masses — says,  "The  many  do  everything,  and  the  few 
nothing.    We  need  not,  therefore,  trouble  ourselves  with 
considering  the  position  of  the  latter.    We  have  nothing 
to  do  but  to  dispossess  them,  and  their  whole  inheritance 
will  be  ours." 

(2)  Socialism  of  the  more  thoughtful  kind  is  now 
obliged  to  say,  "We  by  no  means  deny  that  the  excep- 
tional few  do  something.    We  recognize  that  their  serv- 
ices are  essential,  and  we  will  get  them  to  exert  them- 
selves precisely  as  they  do  now ;  but  they  shall  work 
for  us  on  our  own  terms,  and  the  whole  of  their  present 
inheritance  shall  be  appropriated  by  us  just  the  same." 

Now  what  I  want  to  point  out  to  you  as  to  these  two 
theories  of  socialism  is  this — that,  widely  different  and 
indeed  contradictory  as  they  are  in  their  details,  they 
rest  alike  on  a  fallacy  which  is  in  both  cases  funda- 
mentally the  same.  This  fallacy  consists  in  an  ascrip- 
tion to  society  as  a  whole,  or  rather  to  an  overwhelming 
majority  in  any  society,  of  powers  which  it  does  not 
possess — no  matter  how  completely  democratic  its  po- 
litical organization  may  be. 

I  will  give  you  an  example  of  this  error,  taken  from 
a  quarter  which  renders  it  exceptionally  striking.  About 
eight  or  nine  months  ago  there  appeared  in  the  North 

87 


American  Review  an  article  dealing  with  the  growth, 
not  of  ample,  but  of  colossal  fortunes,  which  the 
writer  earnestly  deplores,  and  which  he  desires  to  see 
checked.  He  hides  his  personality  under  the  initial  X; 
but  the  editor  of  the  North  American  Review  states  in 
a  note  that  he  is  one  of  the  foremost  philosophical  think- 
ers living  in  the  United  States.  He  is  obviously,  more- 
over, a  man  of  moderate,  not  of  extreme  opinions.  I 
will,  with  your  permission,  read  to  you  certain  sentences 
from  his  article.  "It  is,"  he  says,  "to  the  true  interest 
of  the  multimillionaires  themselves  to  join  those  who 
are  free  from  envy  in  trying  to  remove  the  rapidly  grow- 
ing dissatisfaction  with  their  continued  possession  of 
these  vast  sums  of  money."  That  these  men  are  not 
mere  idlers,  that  on  the  whole  they  render  exceptionally 
economic  services  to  the  country,  X  does  not  deny ;  and 
he  admits  that  it  is  necessary  to  stimulate  them  by  al- 
lowing them  some  exceptional  reward;  but  he  contends 
that  the  rewards  which  they  are  at  present  permitted  to 
appropriate  are  excessive,  and  ought,  therefore,  to  be 
limited.  But  limited  by  what  means?  The  means,  he 
says,  are  ready  to  hand,  and  can  be  applied  with  the 
utmost  ease.  They  are  provided  by  the  existing  po- 
litical constitution  of  the  United  States.  And  here 
comes  the  passage  to  which  I  would  particularly  call 
your  attention.  "No  one  can  doubt,"  he  says,  "that,  if 
the  majority  of  the  voters  chose  to  elect  a  Governor  of 
their  own  way  of  thinking,  they  could  readily  enact  a 
progressive  taxation  of  incomes  which  would  limit  every 
citizen  of  New  York  State  to  such  incomes  as  the  ma- 
jority of  the  voters  considers  sufficient  for  him.  And 
it  would  be  particularly  easy,"  he  proceeds,  "to  alienate 
the  property  of  every  man  at  death,  for  it  is  only  neces- 
sary to  repeal  the  statutes  now  authorizing  the  descent 
of  such  property  to  the  heirs  and  the  legatees  of  the 
decedent."  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  more  vivid  illus- 
tration than  this  of  the  error  to  which  I  am  now  re- 
ferring— the  error  of  ascribing  to  majorities  in  demo- 


cratic  communities  not  only  more  power  than  they 
possess,  but  a  kind  of  power  which  they  do  not  possess 
at  all,  and  which  no  kind  of  Government  ever  has  or 
ever  can  possess,  whether  it  be  the  most  diffused  de- 
mocracy or  the  most  arbitrary  and  concentrated  abso- 
lutism. That  a  unanimous  and  overwhelming  majority 
in  any  democratic  country  can  effect  any  legislative 
changes  they  please  at  any  given  moment,  and  perhaps 
enforce  them  for  a  moment,  is  no  doubt  true.  But  life 
does  not  consist  of  isolated  moments  or  periods.  It  is 
a  continuous  process,  in  which  each  moment  is  affected 
by  the  moments  that  have  gone  before,  and  the  pro- 
spective character  of  the  moments  that  are  to  come  after. 
If  it  were  not  for  this  fact  the  majority  of  voters  of 
New  York  State,  by  electing  a  Governor  of  their  own 
way  of  thinking,  might  not  only  limit  the  amount  which 
any  citizen  might  possess ;  it  might  do  a  great  deal 
more  besides.  If  the  principles  of  X  are  correct,  he  is 
a  great  deal  too  modest  in  his  estimate  of  what  a  Gov- 
ernment might  do  with  the  majority  of  the  voters  at 
the  back  of  it.  Besides  enacting  a  law  which  limited 
what  any  citizen  might  accumulate,  it  might  also  enact 
a  law,  with  the  same  delightful  ease,  limiting  the 
amount  of  food  which  any  citizen  might  eat.  It  might 
limit  everybody  to  two  ounces  a  day.  It  might  enact 
that  nobody  should  wear  a  greatcoat  in  winter,  or  that 
grown  men  should  array  themselves  in  the  clothes  of 
babies.  It  might  decree  an  eternal  holiday,  and  forbid 
any  citizen  to  perform  any  kind  of  labor.  Besides 
enacting  that  no  father  should  bequeath  his  wealth  to 
his  children,  it  might  enact  just  as  readily  that  no  father 
should  have  the  custody  of  his  children.  Or  again,  by 
electing  a  Governor  of  its  own  way  of  thinking,  it 
might  enact  that  no  remedy  should  be  applied  to  any 
disease,  other  than  some  quack  medicine  advertised  to 
cure  everything.  There  is  nothing  in  the  principles  so 
solemnly  laid  down  by  X  which  would  render  any  one 

89 


of  these  enactments  more  impossible  than  those  which 
he  himself  contemplates. 

No  one  can  doubt  that  the  majority  of  voters  could 
enact  them  all  through  their  Governor,  if  the  enact- 
ments happened  to  coincide  with  what  X  calls  "their 
way  of  thinking"  at  the  moment.  But  if  such  enact- 
ments were  made  by  the  so-called  all-powerful  majority, 
what  would  be  the  result?  If  a  law  forbade  the  citizens 
to  eat  enough  to  keep  themselves  alive,  either  the  law 
would  be  disregarded — in  which  case  it  would  not  be 
a  real  law  at  all;  or  else,  if  it  were  obeyed,  the  entire 
population  would  die.  If  a  law  forbade  any  citizen  to 
labor,  the  majority  of  the  citizens  might  be  delighted 
with  it  on  Monday,  but  on  Tuesday  they  would  disre- 
gard it,  or  all  of  them  would  die  likewise.  If  a  law 
was  passed  which  deprived  fathers  of  their  children, 
the  parchment  on  which  it  was  written  would  shrivel 
in  the  common  fires  of  humanity.  If  a  law  forbade 
the  sick  to  take  anything  but  a  single  quack  remedy,  a 
week's  obedience  to  the  law  would  render  it  a  dead 
letter.  In  short,  if  any  one  of  these  ridiculous  laws 
were  enacted,  the  citizens  themselves  would  refuse  to 
pay  the  least  attention  to  them  as  soon  as  they  realized 
their  consequences ;  and  the  work  which  they  did  as 
legislators  they  would  tear  to  pieces  as  men. 

And  why?  By  what  power  would  their  legislation 
be  rendered  nugatory— by  what  power  which  is  still 
more  sovereign  than  the  sovereign  democracy  itself? 
The  power  is  a  double  power,  and  voters  contend  in  vaia 
with  it.  It  is  the  power  of  nature  and  of  human  nature. 
Just  as  the  laws  of  nature  must  determine  all  legisla- 
tion as  to  building,  limiting  the  powers  of  the  most 
democratic  government  more  stringently  than  any  king 
or  Kaiser  to  laws  which  are  in  conformity  to  the  nature 
of  the  materials  used,  so  do  the  constitution  and  pro- 
pensities of  the  common  human  character  limit  legisla- 
tion generally,  and  confine  it  within  certain  channels. 

All  this  X  and  similar  thinkers  forget.  X  fortifies, 
90 


himself  in  his  doctrine  of  the  unlimited  power  of  ma- 
jorities by  a  quotation  from  Lord  Coleridge,  the  Eng- 
lish judge  and  lawyer.  "The  same  power,"  says  Lord 
Coleridge,  "which  prescribes  rules  for  the  possession  of 
property  can  of  course  alter  them" — the  power  to  which 
Lord  Coleridge  refers  being  the  will  of  the  majority  at 
whatever  moment  may  be  in  question.  Lord  Coleridge 
may  have  been  a  clever  lawyer,  but  he  was  a  very  child- 
ish philosopher.  Because,  in  any  country,  the  formula- 
tion and  enforcement  of  laws  have  for  their  proximate 
cause  the  will  of  the  governing  body,  to  thinkers  likt 
Lord  Coleridge,  and  to  X  who  appeals  to  him  as  a 
master,  it  seems  that  the  laws  have  in  this  their  ulti- 
mate cause  also.  What  Lord  Coleridge  calls  "the  rules 
of  possession"  are,  according  to  him,  the  arbitrary  crea- 
tion of  the  body  which  prescribes  them  in  formal  words, 
and  provides  punishment  for  such  persons  as  transgress 
them.  But  this  is  a  secondary  process,  not  a  primary 
process  at  all.  Lord  Coleridge  is  simply  inverting  the 
real  order  of  things.  Half  the  existing  rules  prescribed 
as  to  the  possession  of  property  in  any  civilized  country 
to-day  have  for  their  ultimate  object  the  protection  of 
family  life,  the  privacy  of  the  private  home,  and  the 
provision  made  by  parents  for  their  children.  But 
family  life  is  not  primarily  the  creation  of  law,  or  of 
prescribed  rules.  It  is  the  creation  of  instincts  and 
affections  which  have  developed  themselves  in  the 
course  of  ages.  Instead  of  the  law  creating  family  life, 
it  is  family  life  which  has  dictated,  and  called  into  be- 
ing, the  prescribed  rules  which  protect  it.  X,  as  a 
disciple  of  Lord  Coleridge,  appears  to  be  under  the 
impression  that  the  practice  of  bequest  in  this  country 
has  nothing  behind  it  but  the  statutes  which  now  au- 
thorize it  in  the  various  States  of  the  Union.  What  is 
really  behind  it  is  a  universal  propensity  of  human  na- 
ture, a  powerful  and  inveterate  affection,  which  prompts 
the  father  to  work  for  his  children  no  less  than  for 
himself,  and  desire  to  pass  on  to  them  the  advantages 


which  his  own  efforts  have  obtained.  Law  merely  sanc- 
tions and  gives  precision  to  conduct  which  has  a  deeper 
origin  than  legislation.  Property  is  not  primarily  the 
creation  of  law  Law  is  called  into  being  by  men's 
practice  of  acquiring  property,  just  as  the  legal  rights 
and  the  legal  duties  of  parents  owe  their  being  to  the 
unalterable  facts  of  parentage.  Laws,  or  prescribed 
rules,  as  Lord  Coleridge  calls  them,  are  like  clothes. 
Clothes  can  be  varied  indefinitely,  within  limits,  by 
majorities  from  time  to  time;  but  the  clothes  must  all 
be  such  as  will  adapt  themselves  to  the  human  body 
and  its  movements.  The  will  of  the  majority  may  pre- 
scribe the  rule  that  trousers  shall  be  tight  or  loose, 
that  they  shall  be  black  or  brown  or  bright  green  or 
vermilion;  but  no  majority  can  prescribe  that  they 
shall  be  only  three  inches  round  the  waist,  or  that  both 
legs  shall  be  put  into  a  single  trouser,  or  that  sleeves 
shall  start  not  from  the  shoulder,  but  from  the  pockets 
in  the  coat  tails.  To  say,  therefore,  that  majorities  can 
enact  any  laws  they  please  which  are  in  accordance,  as 
X  puts  it,  with  their  own  way  of  thinking  (if  we  mean 
by  laws  laws  that  can  be  carried  into  effect),  is  non- 
sense. The  power  of  the  voters  is  hampered  in  every 
direction  by  the  physical  constitution  of  the  beings  for 
whom  the  laws  are  made,  and  the  prevalent  traits  of 
their  moral  and  intellectual  character. 

The  curious  thing  with  regard  to  X  is  that  he  recog- 
nizes this  himself;  though  he  utterly  fails,  in  spite 
of  his  philosophic  eminence,  to  put  two  and  two  to- 
gether and  see  how  this  fact  conflicts  with  the  omnipo- 
tence which  he  ascribes  to-  legislation.  Let  us  go  back 
to  his  assertion  which  I  just  now  quoted,  to  the  effect 
that  the  majority  of  the  voters  in  New  York  State  could 
easily  limit  incomes  in  any  way  they  pleased,  and  could, 
with  even  greater  ease,  prohibit  all  bequest  and  alienate 
the  property  of  every  man  at  death ;  and  let  us  see  what 
he  hastens  to  say  the  moment  after.  The  powers  of  the 
voters,  which  he  is  apparently  so  anxious  to  invoke, 

92 


would,  he  says,  be  practically  less  formidable  in  their 
action  than  timid  persons  might  anticipate.  And  why 
would  they  be  less  formidable?  Because,  says  X  (and 
I  give  you  his  own  words),  although  "each  man,  by 
reason  of  his  manhood  alone,  has  an  equal  voice  with 
every  other  man  in  making  the  laws  governing  their 
common  country,  and  regulating  the  distribution  of  the 
common  property  .  .  .  (yet)  immense  and  incalculable 
differences  exist  in  men's  natural  capacities  for  render- 
ing honest  service  to  society.  Encouragement  should  be 
given  to  every  man  to  use  all  the  gifts  which  he  pos- 
sesses to  the  fullest  extent  possible;  and,  accordingly, 
reasonable  accumulations  and  the  descent  of  these 
should  be  respected."  They  should,  says  X,  be  re- 
spected. Yes — but  for  what  reason?  Because,  he  says, 
they  encourage  exceptional  men,  whose  services  are 
essential  to  society,  to  develop  and  use  their  capacities 
to  the  utmost  extent  possible;  and  this  is  merely  an- 
other way  of  saying  that,  without  the  encouragement 
provided  by  the  possibility  of  accumulation  and  bequest, 
the  exceptional  capacities  would  not  be  developed  or  used 
at  all.  Moreover,  the  amounts  which  may  be  accumu- 
lated and  bequeathed,  although  they  will  be  limited, 
must,  says  X,  be  considerable.  Here  again  we  pause 
to  ask  the  question  why?  And  the  answer  is  obvious. 
It  lies  on  the  face  of  the  entire  reasoning  of  X.  It  is 
an  answer  referable  to  the  character  of  the  particular 
class  of  men  in  question — of  the  men  whose  capacities 
are  greater — and  in  especial  of  those  whose  capacities 
are,  as  X  expresses  it,  "immensely  and  incalculably 
greater" — than  those  of  the  mass  of  their  fellow-citizens. 
These  men  will  not  do  what  is  wanted  of  them  unless 
they  are  stimulated  by  a  reward  which  is  felt  by  them- 
selves to  be  adequate ;  and  what  is  adequate  is  decided 
by  their  own  characters  and  temperaments,  not  by  any 
ways  of  thinking  prevalent  among  other  people. 

X  proposes  that  they  shall  be  allowed  to  accumulate 
and  bequeath  up  to  a  million  dollars.    Why  does  he  put 

93 


the  amount  at  a  million  dollars,  and  not  cut  it  down 
to  a  thousand?  Because  he  evidently  recognizes  that 
the  men  whose  capacities  are  immensely  and  incalculably 
above  the  ordinary  would  not  be  tempted  by  a  reward 
which,  reduced  to  its  smallest  proportions,  was  not  com- 
paratively at  all  events  large.  X  says,  in  his  formal 
statement  of  his  case,  that  the  amount  of  the  reward  is 
to  be  determined  by  what  the  citizens  think  sufficient; 
and  he  suggests  his  million  dollars  as  the  sum  on  which 
most  probably  they  would  fix.  And  it  is,  of  course, 
imaginable  that  the  citizens,  in  making  such  an  esti- 
mate, might  be  right.  But  what  X  fails  to  see  is  this, 
that  if  they  were  right,  the  sum  would  not  be  sufficient 
because  the  citizens  themselves  thought  it  was.  It  would 
be  sufficient  because  it  was  thought  sufficient  by  the 
men  of  exceptional  capacity,  at  whose  thoughts  the  citi- 
zens would  have  made  a  shrewd  or  a  lucky  guess.  The 
fisherman  may  make  a  hundred  different  kinds  of  fancy 
flies,  thinking  each  sufficient  at  the  time;  but  it  lies 
with  the  trout  to  determine  whether  or  no  he  will  rise 
to  them.  It  is  a  question  not  of  what  the  fisherman 
thinks,  but  of  what  the  trout  thinks;  and  the  fisher- 
man's thoughts  are  effective  only  when  they  coincide 
with  the  trout's. 

With  what  intellectual  carelessness,  and  yet  with  what 
a  solemn  self-confidence,  thinkers  like  X,  with  socialistic 
or  quasi-socialistic  sympathies,  approach  such  questions 
as  the  present,  may  be  seen  still  more  clearly  by  going 
a  little  further  into  the  details  of  the  arguments  and 
the  proposals  of  X.  He  represents  the  relative  positions 
of  the  exceptional  man,  such  as  the  great  inventor  or 
organizer,  and  the  masses,  by  means  of  the  following 
dialogue  between  the  two :  "I  have,"  says  the  inventor, 
"discovered  something  which  will  be  greatly  to  your 
advantage.  What  compensation  ought  I  fairly  to  re- 
ceive for  it?"  And  the  chosen  representatives  of  the 
people,  speaking  for  them,  answer,  "It  is  for  the  general 
advantage  to  encourage  useful  inventions;  therefore,  if 

94 


we  find  your  invention  useful,  we  will  give  you  the  ex- 
clusive right  to  the  profits  of  it  for  fourteen  years" — 
it  being  of  course  understood,  as  before  laid  down  by 
X,  that  these  profits  shall  not  exceed  an  average  of 
fifty  thousand  dollars  a  year.  Similarly,  "the  manager 
and  initiator  of  a  great  industrial  enterprise  says  to  the 
American  people,  "I  wish  to  devote  myself  to  your 
service.  What  will  you  allow  me  to  withdraw  from 
the  common  property  for  such  service?"  The  American 
people  in  their  generosity  answer,  "We  will  give  you 
as  much  as  we  give  the  President  of  the  United  States ; 
and  while  we  give  him  the  compensation  for  eight  years 
only,  we  will  give  it  to  you  for  the  active  years  of  your 
life."  "It  is  difficult  to  see,"  X  adds  with  amusing 
naivete,  ''how  any  undue  restraint  would  be  placed 
upon  any  energy  or  ability  of  a  beneficent  character," 
if  the  law  were  to  limit  the  possible  gains  of  such  abil- 
ity to  an  income  of  something  like  fifty  thousand  dol- 
lars a  year,  and  to  place  a  corresponding  limit  on  the 
amount  of  capital  which  could  be  bequeathed. 

Now  let  us  suppose  that  the  American  people  to-day 
strike  some  such  bargain  with  the  inventor  of  some 
new  means  of  traction,  which  will  increase  the  speed 
of  trains,  while  diminishing  their  expense  and  danger. 
The  invention  works  well,  and  the  inventor  for  four- 
teen years  draws  the  maximum  profit  allowed,  namely, 
fifty  thousand  dollars  a  year.  But  meanwhile  he  has 
seen  his  way  to  making  his  invention  still  better,  or  to 
producing  another  of  quite  a  different  kind,  and  even 
more  generally  beneficial,  if  only  the  community  will 
offer  him  the  required  inducement,  or,  as  X  says,  the 
requisite  encouragement,  to  do  so.  But  if  matters  are 
conducted  according  to  the  principles  of  X,  the  com- 
munity is  able  to  offer  him  no  inducement  whatever; 
for  he  already  enjoys  the  maximum  which  his  country, 
its  its  generosity,  will  allow  him;  and  though  his  fur- 
ther exertions  might  enrich  it  with  untold  millions,  his 
country  will  be  obliged  to  tell  him  that  he  shall  not  , 

95 


keep  a  cent  of  these  for  himself.  What  then  will  hap- 
pen? If  the  original  compensation  was  necessary,  as 
X  assumes  it  was,  in  order  to  encourage  the  man  to 
achieve  his  first  great  success,  the  impossibility  of  his 
receiving  any  such  encouragement  again  will  be  equally 
operative  in  discouraging  him  from  pushing  his  success 
further.  In  short,  if  the  principle  of  which  X  so  glibly 
says  that  it  is  hard  to  see  how  it  could  check  the  de- 
velopment of  ability,  were  really  applied  to  ability  in 
actual  life,  its  most  obvious  effect  would  be  to  render 
able  men  sterile  at  a  period  of  their  industrial  life, 
which  was  early  and  premature  in  proportion  as  their 
ability  was  productive ;  for  in  proportion  as  their  ability 
was  productive,  the  earlier  would  the  time  be  reached 
by  them  at  which  their  efforts  would  have  gained  for 
them  the  utmost  number  of  dollars  which  the  State,  by 
way  of  encouragement,  would  allow  them  either  to  en- 
joy or  to  bequeath. 

Let  X,  then,  and  the  socialists  say  what  they  please, 
the  formal  legislation  of  majorities,  beyond  certain  lim- 
its, is  impotent.  Just  as  the  power  of  no  democracy 
could  make  the  ordinary  man  thrive  and  labor  on  less 
food  than  would  nourish  his  body  adequately,  so  can 
no  power  of  democracy  make  exceptional  men  develop 
and  use  the  exceptional  powers  latent  in  them,  under 
the  stimulus  of  motives  which  these  men  themselves  do 
not  feel  to  be  sufficient. 

Society,  in  short,  may  be  compared  to  an  electro- 
magnetic engine  which  works  by  tke  pull  of  magnets — 
or,  in  other  words,  their  needs  and  their  ambitions. 
Men  are  pulled  into  their  primary  activities  by  their 
more  or  less  equal  needs.  In  proportion  to  their  capaci- 
ties they  are  pulled  into  their  supplementary  activities 
by  the  magnetic  attraction  of  a  multitude  of  attainable 
objects,  which  vary  in  accordance  with  what  Ruskin 
calls  the  indefinitely  varied  romance  of  their  desires ; 
and,  in  an  economic  sense,  that  society  becomes  richest 
which  offers,  in  the  shape  of  prizes  to  exceptional  eco- 

96 


nomic  efficiency,  the  most  powerful  magnets  by  which 
such  efficiency  may  be  actuated.     And  here  let  me  call 
your  attention  to  an  extreme,  but  not  impossible,  case. 
Let  us   suppose  that   the  main  desire  which  moved 
exceptional  men  to  devote  their  capacities  to  the  aug- 
mentation of  their  country's  wealth  was  the  desire,  by 
retaining  at  least  a  considerable  proportion  of  their  own 
products,  to  retire  from  the  business  of  production  at 
a  certain  period  of   their  careers   as  possible,   and   to 
join  a  class  which,  whether  idle  or  active  otherwise — 
whether  devoted  to  mere  pleasure,  or  to  philanthropy, 
or  an  enlightened  patronage  of  the  arts,  or  to  specula- 
tive thought  and  study — was  itself  in  an  economic  sense 
altogether  unproductive.     Now,  in  order  to  join  such 
a  class,  and  to  work  with  a  view  of  joining  it,  society 
must  be  so  organized  that  such  a  class  can  exist;  and 
the    fact   of    its    existence    would    constitute    the   main 
moral  magnet  which,  on  our  present  hypothesis,  would 
be  essential  to  the  development  of  the  highest  kinds  of 
economic  power.     Such  being  the  case,   the   following 
conclusion  reveals  itself,  which,  though  at  first  sight  it 
may  seem  a  paradox,  will  be  found  on  reflection  to  be 
self-evident — the  conclusion,  namely,  that  a  class  which, 
if  considered  by  itself,  is  absolutely  nonproductive,  may, 
when  taken  in  connection  with  the  social  system  as  a 
whole,  be  an  essential  and  cardinal  factor  in  the  work- 
ing machinery  of  production,  supplying,  as  it  would  do, 
by  the  mere  fact  of  its  existence,  the  magnetic  or  attrac- 
tive power  by  which  the  machinery  was  kept  in  motion. 
The  case  is,  as  I  have  put  it,  an  extreme  one ;  but, 
with  qualifications  differing  in  different  countries,  it  has 
its  counterpart  in  fact.     If  men  do  not  work  in  order 
to  secure  leisure  for  themselves,  they  work  in  order  to 
secure  leisure  for  their  women.    And  here  I  may  men- 
tion in  passing  (for  I  cannot  go  into  the  subject  now) 
that  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  most  important 
inquiries  for  the  economist  would  be  an  inquiry  into 
the  influence  of  women  in  the  sphere  of  economic  action, 

97 


I  do  not  refer  to  women  as  the  competitors  of  men 
in  the  labor  market.  I  refer  to  them  as  affecting  the 
quality  of  men's  ambition.  There  are  populations  to- 
day— I  might  almost  say  nations — which  live  on  wom- 
an's desire  for  feathers  and  furs  and  diamonds ;  and 
here  we  have  merely  the  fringes  of  woman's  influence 
— the  narrow  fringes,  noticeable  because  they  gleam  and 
glitter.  What  would  X  or  Lord  Coleridge  say  as  to 
facts  like  these?  Would  they  say  that  a  woman's  appe- 
tite for  wearing  diamonds  in  her  hair  owed  its  origin 
to  the  rules  prescribed  by  legislators,  which  punished 
one  woman  as  a  thief  if  she  took  away  the  diamonds 
of  another?  Legislation  can  regularize  or  regulate  the 
operation  of  tastes  and  motives,  just  as  by  locks  and 
dams  men  can  regulate  the  flowing  of  a  river;  but  if 
a  given  amount  of  efficiency  is  to  be  got  out  of  certain 
men  by  applying  to  them  the  magnetic  power  of  mo- 
tive, no  majority  of  other  men  can  make  a  motive  suffi- 
cient by  agreeing  to  think  that  it  is  so,  any  more  than 
they  can  determine  the  amount  and  the  fall  of  water 
required  to  get  a  given  amount  of  work  from  a  water- 
wheel,  merely  by  declaring  that  as  much  water  as  they 
wish  to  spare  ought  to  be  sufficient  to  supply  as  much 
power  as  they  demand.  A  group  of  Hottentots  might 
as  well  expect  an  American  or  a  Frenchman  to  fall  in 
love  with  a  Hottentot,  because  in  their  opinion  her 
charms  are  sufficient  to  intoxicate  everybody. 

So  long,  then,  as  society  desires  to  get  the  best  work  out 
of  its  citizens,  and  so  long  as  some  men  are,  in  the  words 
of  X,  "immensely  and  incalculably"  more  efficient  than 
the  great  mass  of  their  fellows,  and  so  long  as  their 
efficiency  requires,  as  X  admits  it  does,  some  adequate 
motive  or  stimulus  to  induce  these  men  to  develop  it, 
these  men  themselves,  in  virtue  of  their  inherent  char- 
acters, must  primarily  determine  what  the  motive  shall 
be;  and  not  all  the  majorities  in  the  world,  however 
unanimous,  could  make  an  inducement  sufficient  if  the 
particular  minority  in  question  did  not  feel  it  to  be  so. 

98 


The  minority,  then,  whose  efficiency  is  immensely  and 
incalculably  above  the  average,  must,  if  the  majority 
desires  to  retain  and  to  profit  by  its  services,  necessarily 
remain  in  this  respect  the  masters  of  the  economic  situa- 
tion, nor  could  any  conceivable  form  of  socialistic  legis- 
lation alter  the  fact. 

It  is  no  doubt  quite  possible  that  the  inducements  at 
present  offered  to  industrial  ability  may  be,  in  some 
cases,  excessive,  and  could  be  diminished  to  a  certain 
extent  without  rendering  the  ability  any  the  less  active. 
But,  should  this  prove  to  be  the  case,  and  should  the 
majority  pass  measures  on  the  assumption  that  it  was 
so,  it  would  not  be  the  case  because  the  majority  made 
the  assumption,  but  because  the  assumption  happened 
to  coincide  with  the  psychological  traits  of  the  minority. 

All  this  that  I  have  been  urging  may  be  suspected 
as  an  exaggerated  attack  on  the  principles  associated 
with  all  conceptions  of  democracy;  and  not  only  so- 
cialists, but  others,  on  this  account  may  be  inclined  to 
reject  it  with  impatience.  I  think  I  shall  be  able  to 
show  you  that  such  objectors  are  very  much  mistaken, 
and  that  the  exceptional  powers  of  dictation  possessed 
in  some  respects  by  the  minority  are  so  far  from  being 
inconsistent  with  the  real  powers  of  the  majority,  that 
the  powers  of  the  majority,  when  properly  understood, 
do  but  illustrate  the  nature  of  the  former,  and  are,  in- 
deed, their  counterpart.  For  though  socialism  ascribes 
to  majorities  powers  which  they  do  not  possess,  we 
shall  find  that  majorities  do  actually  possess  others,  in 
some  ways  very  much  greater,  of  which  socialistic 
thought  has  thus  far  taken  no  cognizance  at  all.  The 
nature  of  these  powers  has  been  implied  in  what  I 
have  said  already;  but  I  now  propose  to  deal  with  them 
in  a  more  direct  and  more  explicit  way.  I  have  said 
that  minorities  are  able  to  dictate  their  own  terms  to 
any  body  of  legislators  which  desires  to  secure  their 
services,  because  they  alone  can  determine  what  treat- 
ment will  supply  them  with  a  motive  to  exert  them- 

99 


selves.  What  holds  good  of  the  minority  as  opposed 
to  the  majority,  holds  good  in  essentials,  though  in  a 
somewhat  different  form,  of  the  majority  as  opposed 
to  the  minority. 

Let  me  begin  with  an  example  from  a  sphere  other 
than  that  of  economics — I  mean  the  sphere  of  religion. 
In  no  other  sphere  has  the  influence  of  great  individuals 
been  so  vast,  so  far-reaching,  so  conspicuous,  so  noto- 
rious as  in  this.  The  mere  mention  of  such  personali- 
ties as  Buddha,  Zoroaster,  Mahomet,  and  another 
greater  than  all  of  them,  will  show  us  that  such  is  the 
case;  and  to  these  we  may  add  the  apostles,  philos- 
ophers, and  theologians  who  have  spread  and  explained 
the  respective  gospels  intrusted  to  them,  and  given  by 
their  saintly  lives  examples  of  the  value  of  their  teach- 
ing. But  while  nowhere  is  the  power  of  the  few  more 
conspicuous  than  in  the  domain  of  religion,  nowhere  is 
the  power  of  the  many  more  conspicuous  also.  No  re- 
ligion has  ever  become  established,  and  influenced  the 
lives  of  men,  unless  its  doctrines  and  its  spirit  have 
appealed  to  those  spiritual  wants  which  have  been  shared 
to  a  degree  approximately  equal  by  all  the  multitudes 
among  whom  the  religion  in  question  has  been  estab- 
lished. Thus  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Atonement 
would  never  have  been  accepted  by  men,  it  would  never, 
indeed,  have  conveyed  any  meaning  to  them,  if  there 
had  not  been  something  in  their  nature  corresponding 
to  a  sense  of  sin ;  and  the  universal  effect  which  this 
doctrine  had  on  all  classes  alike  throughout  the  Chris- 
tian world  shows  that  this  something  which  corre- 
sponded with  a  sense  of  sin  was  one  of  those  charac- 
teristics in  respect  of  which  there  was  a  general  equality, 
and  that  the  acceptance  of  the  doctrine  was  therefore 
a  true  act  of  democracy.  For  true  democratic  action  is, 
in  its  essence,  this — an  action  arising  from  a  spontaneous 
coincidence  of  a  multitude  of  thoughts  and  feelings, 
which  happen  to  be  identical  not  because  those  who 
entertain  them  have'  allowed  their  thoughts  and  feelings 

100 


to  be  determined  for  them  by  the  same  leaders,  but 
because  with  regard  to  the  points  in  question  they 
naturally  themselves  think  and  feel  identically. 

Let  us  now  turn  again  to  a  matter  to  which  I  have 
referred  already — namely,  the  family  life  of  the  citizens 
of  any  race  or  nation.  This  results  from  propensities 
in  a  vast  number  of  men  which,  although  they  are 
similar,  are  in  each  case  independent.  These  propensi- 
ties of  the  many  give  rise  to  legislation  the  object  of 
which  is,  as  Lord  Coleridge  says,  to  prescribe  rules  by 
which  their  satisfaction  may  be  regulated  and  made 
secure.  But  the  propensities  are  so  far  from  originat- 
ing in  the  legislation  that  no  legislation  which  ran 
counter  to  them  would  be  tolerated.  Socialists  them- 
selves have  continually  admitted  this,  and  many  of  them 
have  deplored  the  fact,  declaring  that  nothing  consti- 
tutes so  formidable  an  obstacle  to  socialism  as  the 
obstinate  affection  with  which  men  cling  to  family  life. 
The  Italian  socialist,  Giovanni  Bossi,  who  attempted 
about  fifteen  years  ago  to  found  a  socialistic  colony  in 
Brazil — an  attempt  which  completely  failed — attributes 
its  failure  largely  to  this  particular  cause.  "If  I  had 
the  power,"  he  writes,  "to  banish  the  greatest  afflictions 
of  this  world,  such  as  wars,  plagues,  and  famines,  I 
would  renounce  it,  if,  instead,  I  could  suppress  the 
family." 

Here  we  have  an  example  of  pure  practical  democracy 
rendering  what  affected  to  be  democratic  legislation 
powerless.  We  have  the  cumulative  power  of  similar 
human  characters  compelling  legislation  to  limit  itself 
in  accordance  with  what  these  characters  demanded. 
And  now  let  us  go  a  step — a  very  short  step — farther. 
The  family  propensities  in  question  show  their  dicta- 
torial power  not  only  in  the  limitations  which  they  im- 
pose, but  also,  and  even  more  openly,  in  the  material 
surroundings  of  existence — especially  in  the  structure 
of  the  dwellings  of  all  classes  except  the  lowest.  The 
detached  cottage,  as  well  as  the  large  mansion,  and 

101 


the  tenement  of  three  rooms,  are  in  one  respect  all 
alike.  They  are  constructed  with  a  view  to  keeping  the 
family  group  united,  and  each  family  group  separate 
from  all  others.  Nor  do  matters  end  here.  For  if  the 
spontaneous  propensities  which  result  in  family  life 
affect  the  structure  of  the  dwelling,  other  propensities, 
more  various  in  detail,  but  in  each  case  equally  sponta- 
neous, determine  what  commodities  shall  be  put  into  it. 
And  this  brings  us  back  to  our  own  particular  sub- 
ject— namely,  the  power  of  the  few  and  the  many  in 
the  sphere  of  economic  production.  The  man  of  ex- 
ceptional industrial  capacity  becomes  rich  in  the  modern 
world  by  producing  goods  or  by  rendering  services, 
which  the  many  consume  or  profit  by,  and  for  which 
they  render  him  a  return.  But  in  order  that  they  may 
take  his  goods,  and  render  him  a  return  for  his  services, 
the  goods  and  the  services  must  be  such  that  the  many 
desire  to  have  them.  All  the  productive  powers  that 
have  ever  been  possessed  by  men  of  the  highest  eco- 
nomic ability  would  be  absolutely  futile,  unless  the 
commodities  which  they  cheapened  and  multiplied,  or 
the  services  which  they  were  employed  in  rendering, 
satisfied  tastes  or  wants  existing  in  various  sections  of 
the  community.  The  eliciting  of  these  wants  or  tastes 
depends  very  often,  and  in  progressive  communities 
usually,  on  a  previous  supply  of  the  commodities  or 
services  that  minister  to  them.  Thus  the  introduction 
of  railways,  of  the  telegraph,  of  the  telephone  or  the 
electric  light,  preceded  any  popular  demand  for  them; 
just  as  many  a  great  writer,  according  to  the  well- 
known  saying,  has  to  create  the  taste  by  which  he  is  to 
be  appreciated.  But  the  writer  could  not  create  this 
taste — or,  in  other  words,  make  it  actual — unless  it 
existed  already  in  human  nature  as  a  potentiality:  nor 
could  the  inventors  and  introducers  of  the  electric  light 
have  made  the  general  public  anxious  to  have  it  in 
their  houses  if  mankind  at  large  entertained  no  wish 

102 


whatever  to  do  anything  but  sleep  in  darkness  between 
the  hours  of  sunset  and  sunrise. 

The  wants  and  tastes,  then,  to  which  the  ability  of 
the  few  ministers,  whether  common  to  all  men,  like 
the  desire  for  food,  or  developed  by  influences  from 
without,  like  the  desire  for  electric  lighting  or  tele- 
graphic communication, 'are,  when  once  they  are  in  ex- 
istence, essentially  democratic  in  their  nature.  Each 
customer  is  like  a  voter,  who  practically  gives  his  vote 
for  the  kind  of  goods  which  he  desires  should  be  pro- 
duced and  supplied  to  him.  He  gives  his  vote  under 
no  compulsion  except  that  which  arises  from  his  own 
internal  character;  and  those  men  whose  ability  multi- 
plies and  cheapens  the  goods  are  unable  to  alter  his 
character,  and  are  imperatively  obliged  to  be  guided 
by  it. 

Thus  while,  so  long  as  the  productivity  of  labor  is 
sustained  and  augmented  by  the  ability  of  the  few  who 
direct  it,  the  ordinary  man  can  never  be  free  as  a  la- 
borer, he  is  free,  and  must  always  remain  free,  in  re- 
spect of  his  tastes  as  a  consumer.  A  man  employed 
in  a  brewery  may  be  ordered  about  by  an  employer  in 
respect  of  his  technical  actions ;  but  no  employer  could 
•make  him  like  or  buy  the  beer  if  his  palate  found  it 
nauseous,  and  if  he  preferred  whisky.  In  other  words, 
demand  is  essentially  democratic,  while  supply,  in  pro- 
portion to  its  sustained  and  enhanced  abundance,  is 
essentially  oligarchic.  Now,  that  demand  is  essentially 
democratic,  and  depends  on  the  tastes  and  characters 
of  those  by  whom  the  demands  are  made,  nobody  will 
be  inclined  to  deny.  But  if,  turning  our  attention  from 
society,  taken  as  a  whole,  to  the  exceptionally  able 
minority  on  whom  the  business  of  supply  depends,  we 
shall  find  that  they,  as  suppliers,  make  their  own  de- 
mand also — a  demand  for  a  recompense,  not  indeed 
equal  to  the  value  of  the  whole  of  the  goods  produced 
by  them,  but  bearing  a  proportion  to  it  which  is,  in 
their  estimation,  sufficient;  and  this  demand  rests  on 

103 


precisely  the  same  basis  as  does  that  of  the  public  cus- 
tomer. It  rests  on  the  tastes  and  the  characters  of'the 
men  who  make  it;  and  it  is  just  as  impossible  for  the 
many  to  decide  by  legislation  that  the  few  shall  put 
forth  the  whole  of  their  exceptional  powers  for  a  maxi- 
mum of  fifty  thousand  dollars,  if  what  they  want  is  a 
hundred  thousand,  as  it  is  for  the  few  to  make  the 
many  buy  bad  beer  when  they  want  good,  or  green  coats 
when  they  want  black. 

That  is  to  say,  so  long  as  the  wealth  of  any  country 
depends,  firstly,  on  the  average  labor  of  a  multitude  of 
average  men,  and,  secondly,  on  the  ability  of  exceptional 
men  by  which  the  products  of  average  labor  are  mul- 
tiplied, the  demands  of  these  few  are  coordinate  with 
the  demands  of  the  many;  and  unless  the  fructifying 
power  of  ability  is  to  be  dispensed  with  altogether,  they 
are  bound  to  impress  themselves  equally  on  the  eco- 
nomic structure  of  society.  Just  as  the  character  of 
the  many  dictates  terms  to  the  few,  so  does  the  char- 
acter of  the  few  dictate  terms  to  the  many.  So  long  as 
production  depends  on  men  of  vastly  unequal  capaci- 
ties, legislation  can  no  more  reduce  the  positions  of  all 
men  to  a  level  than  we  can  create  a  solid  tableland  by 
throwing  a  blanket  over  the  hills  and  valleys. 

A  question,  however,  still  remains  to  be  answered. 
If  the  power  of  the  majority  is  in  reality  limited,  as  we 
have  seen  it  to  be,  both  in  the  domain  of  production 
and  politics — if  instead  of  producing  all  wealth  by  its 
labor,  it  produces  only  a  fraction  of  it;  and  if,  instead 
of  being  able  by  its  votes  to  enforce  any  laws  it  pleases, 
it  is  limited  on  all  sides  by  the  complexities  of  human 
character,  I  repeat  a  question  which  I  referred  to 
in  a  former  lecture,  and  ask  how  contrary  opinions 
have  arisen  not  only  among  uneducated,  but  among 
many  educated  men,  that  the  labor  of  the  many  is  the 
sole  power  in  production,  and  that  the  votes  of  the 
many  are  potentially  the  supreme  power  in  legislation. 
Why  is  one  or  other  of  these  opinions,  or  both  of 

104 


them,  asserted  over  and  over  again,  as  though  it  or 
they  were  indubitable,  by  so  many  distinguished  men, 
such  as  Ruskin,  Carlyle,  Tolstoy,  the  philosophic  X. 
and  nonsocialistic  members  of  the  existing  British  Gov- 
ernment? For  so  general  a  fact  the  reasons  must  be 
equally  general.  I  have  already  dealt  with  one  of  them 
— namely,  certain  errors  which  have  been  popularized 
by  imperfect  economic  science ;  but  there  are  others.  The 
opinions  in  question  are  due  partly  to  optical  delusions. 
They  are  partly  what,  in  Ruskin's  phrase,  we  may  de- 
scribe as  "pathetic  fallacies,"  and  the  latter  reenforce 
the  former. 

What  I  mean  by  saying  that  they  are  partly  optical 
delusions  is  this :  that  to  anyone  who  considers  the  sur- 
face of  things — and  we  can  none  of  us  escape  its  influ- 
ence— the  many,  the  people,  the  average  men,  the  la- 
borers— have  the  appearance  of  doing  everything.  This 
is  the  impression  which,  spectacularly,  they  produce  on 
all  of  us.  If,  for  example,  we  watch  a  great  ship  being 
built,  or  crude  iron  being  converted  into  steel,  we  see 
laborers  everywhere.  We  see  muscular  arms  moving. 
We  see  adroit  hands  wielding  hammers,  which  fill  the 
air  with  ceaseless  sounds  of  riveting.  But  the  forces 
which  direct  all  this  multitudinous  labor — the  minds 
which  have  mastered  the  secrets  of  metallic  chemistry, 
or  the  subtle  lines  and  subtly  balanced  proportions 
which  will  enable  the  great  ship  to  walk  the  waters  like 
a  thing  of  life — these  are  hidden  away  in  secluded 
offices,  or  remote  studies  or  laboratories ;  and  even 
when  we  have  identified  them,  they  are  to  ordinary  ears 
silent.  Further,  on  the  impression  produced  by  this 
spectacular  contrast,  supervenes  the  reflection  that  the 
work  performed  by  ability,  even  if  important,  is  per- 
formed with  ease,  while  the  labor  of  the  many  involves 
visible  strain ;  and  sympathy  with  those  who  seem  to 
bear  the  harder  burden  inclines  us  to  exaggerate  their 
share  in  the  productive  process,  representing  it  as  pro- 
portionate to  what  they  undergo,  rather  than  to  what 

105 


they  really  produce.  When  the  laborers  suffer,  or  are 
thought  to  suffer,  any  real  injustice,  this  sort  of  exag- 
geration both  in  thought  and  statement  is,  for  those 
who  sympathize  with  them,  irresistible. 

Then  again  there  is  generated  a  similar  optical  de- 
lusion, accompanied  by  an  analogous,  though  a  different 
kind  of  emotional  delusion,  by  the  spectacle,  in  demo- 
cratic countries,  of  the  many  as  a  force  in  politics.  The 
various  ways  in  which  the  power  of  the  many  is  limited 
are  hidden,  and  escape  our  vision.  All  we  see  is  cer- 
tain given  candidates,  or  given  policies,  prepared  like 
scales  of  a  balance,  into  one  or  other  of  which  the  voters 
cast  their  votes  like  so  many  equal  weights;  and  into 
whichever  scale  the  majority  of  these  weights  is  cast, 
the  majority  that  cast  them  is  bound  to  win  the  day. 
That  the  voters  can,  except  on  very  rare  occasions,  do 
nothing  but  choose  between  courses  which  have  been 
formulated  and  submitted  to  them  by  a  minority — that 
the  chosen  course  itself  can  only  be  followed  out  in 
practice  on  condition  that  it  is  consonant  with  the  needs 
and  the  working  principles  of  human  nature — these 
facts  do  not  appear  on  the  surface.  We  see  nothing 
but  the  multitude  of  voting  units,  whose  votes,  given 
or  withheld,  make  or  mar  the  statesman,  no  less  abso- 
lutely than  the  favor  of  a  French  king  once  made  or 
marred  a  courtier  statesman  at  Versailles.  For  this 
reason  the  democratic  statesman  of  to-day  is  constantly 
impelled,  no  less  than  was  the  courtier,  to  flatter  and 
cringe  to  the  sovereign  who  can  bestow  on  them,  or 
withhold  from  them,  the  power  and  the  position  which 
they  covet.  Louis  the  Fourteenth  said,  "I  am  the 
State" ;  and  the  courtiers  who  competed  for  his  favor 
bowed  their  periwigs  in  acquiesence  till  they  touched 
the  sovereign's  boots.  The  democratic  politicians  of 
to-day  say  the  same  thing  to  the  voters — "You  are  the 
State.  You  are  the  fountain  of  power  and  honor.  You 
are  able  to  do  everything" ;  and  they  accompany  these 
acts  of  homage  by  obeisances  yet  more  profound.  In 

1 06 


what  they  say  there  is  an  undoubted  element  of  truth, 
but  they  exaggerate  it  till  it  becomes  nonsense ;  and  by 
repeating  their  exaggerations  they  come  at  last  to  be- 
lieve in  them.  Their  phrases  become  part  of  the  gen- 
eral language  of  to-day :  and  what  their  phrases  express 
becomes  part  of  the  general  thought. 

Then  again  a  similar  kind  of  flattery  is  bestowed  on 
the  people  for  reasons  of  a  higher  kind.  If  we  believe 
that  there  is  anything  sacred  in  man  as  man,  then  any 
one  man  in  respect  of  this  is  the  equal  of  every  other, 
and  the  numerical  majority,  which  must  always  be  the 
manual  laborers,  becomes  morally  synonymous,  whether 
as  voting  or  laboring,  with  humanity  itself  in  its  moral 
needs  and  struggles.  The  claims  of  the  majority,  when 
they  are  thus  regarded,  seem  so  paramount  that  many 
generous  enthusiasts  cannot  conceive  that  they  have 
any  limits;  and  spiritual  values  become,  alike  in  their 
language  and  their  thoughts,  convertible  terms  with  po- 
litical omnipotence,  and  with  industrial  or  economic 
efficiency. 

There  remains,  however,  yet  another  reason  for  the 
current  exaggerations  as  to  the  position  which  the  ma- 
jority— the  average  men,  as  distinct  from  the  excep- 
tional men — hold ;  and  this  reason  is  more  potent  than 
any  of  those  just  mentioned.  Masses  of  ordinary  men, 
or  even  men  inferior  to  the  average,  possess,  when 
circumstances  cause  them  to  act  in  concert,  powers 
which,  as  related  to  their  immediate  objects,  are  really 
so  great  that  it  is  hardly  possible  to  exaggerate  them ; 
and  they  are  not  only  great,  but  they  are  formidable. 
Of  these  powers,  that  most  familiar  to  the  modern 
world  is  the  strike.  A  gifted  employer  may  be  ready 
to  endow  the  world  with  inventions  or  products  which 
would  not  onjy  enrich  himself,  but  would  also  cheapen 
and  improve  the  food,  or  minister  to  the  comfort  of 
millions ;  but  if  the  mass  of  laborers  required  to  give 
effect  to  his  designs  refused  his  wages,  and  unanimously 
declined  to  work,  this  one  man  confronted  by  several 

107 


thousand  would  be  practically  impotent  so  long  as  they 
maintained  their  attitude.  Still  more  impressive  in  their 
exercise  are  those  further  and  fiercer  powers  which, 
as  history  shows  us,  reside  in  mere  numbers  also.  I 
mean  those  of  riot  and  terrorism  and  physical  force  gen- 
erally. Paris  is  sufficiently  familiar  with  manifestations 
of  power  of  this  kind — with  shattered  palaces,  with  bar- 
ricades and  streets  running  with  blood;  and  a  similar 
familiarity  has  been  lately  acquired  by  Russia.  If  we 
look  back  into  the  remote  past,  we  encounter  the  same 
phenomena.  The  physical  power  of  numbers  was  often 
felt  in  Rome,  notably  in  connection  with  the  agrarian 
laws.  There  have  been  peasant  risings  in  Germany, 
Bohemia,  and  mediaeval  England.  All  this  is  not  only 
true  but  obvious.  The  power  of  the  many  as  against 
the  few  is,  in  certain  respects,  invincible.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  in  the  presence  of  facts  like  these  an  im- 
pression is  produced  that  the  many  can  do  everything. 
But  if  we  consider  all  the  many  deeds,  of  the  kind  now 
in  question,  which  the  many  in  such  moments  of  tri- 
umph have  ever  actually  accomplished,  or  from  the 
nature  of  the  case  can  accomplish,  we  shall  find  that 
they  all  of  them  fall  into  the  same  category — that  they 
are  not  positive,  but  negative ;  that  they  are  obstructive, 
(/not  productive;  that  they  are  destructive,  not  construc- 
tive. In  many  cases  even  an  individual  can  do  as  much 
as  a  crowd.  It  took  a  crowd  to  demolish  the  Bastille: 
but  the  temple  of  Diana  at  Ephesus — renowned  as  one 
of  the  wonders  of  the  world — was  burned  down  by  an 
individual,  who  became  immortal  as  the  arch-fool  of 
antiquity.  But  because  the  fool  could  destroy  the  tem- 
ple, does  it  follow  that  the  fool  could  rebuild  it?  Any 
mischievous  boy,  with  a  bit  of  iron  or  a  log,  could 
upset  the  most  powerful  locomotive  ever  built  by  hu- 
man ingenuity.  But  the  boy  could  not  build  the  engine, 
any  more  than  Sir  Isaac  Newton's  dog  Diamond  could 
himself  do  over  again  the  elaborate  calculations  he  had 
destroyed.  And  multitudes  are,  in  the  most  formidabl 

108 


display  of  their  powers,  nothing  more  than  Newton' 
dog  multiplied.  They  may  sometimes  destroy  what  is 
injurious  along  with  what  is  useful  and  necessary.  But 
the  force  which  enables  them  to  destroy  gives  them  no 
capacity  to  reconstruct.  A  monarchy  having  been  de- 
stroyed by  the  power  of  a  mere  multitude,  and  another 
government  having  been  formed  which  successfully 
takes  its  place,  the  latter  may  be  the  work  of  men  who 
were  members  of  the  destructive  multitude  yesterday ; 
but  it  would  not  be  the  work  of  the  miscellaneous  and 
destructive  multitude  itself.  It  would  be  the  work  of 
individuals  isolated  from  their  former  companions  and 
superior  to  them.  A  mob,  with  a  few  painters  included 
in  it,  may  destroy  the  contents  of  a  picture  gallery : 
but  if  any  new  pictures  are  to  take  the  place  of  the  old, 
it  will  be  the  few  painters,  and  not  the  mob,  that  will 
paint  them. 

The  same  fact  is  illustrated  in  a  less  sensational,  but 
a  more  direct,  way  by  the  power  of  the  many,  as  em- 
bodied in  the  modern  strike.  The  strike  being  essen- 
tially an  economic  or  industrial  movement,  it  is  held 
to  exemplify  the  power  of  labor  in  the  sphere  of  eco- 
nomic production.  In  reality  it  does  nothing  of  the 
kind.  I  am  not  for  a  moment  saying  that  strikes  are 
not  often  to  be  justified;  but,  however  justifiable  they 
be,  or  however  unjustifiable,  no  single  power  is  exerted 
in  them  or  represented  by  them  which  tends  to  produce 
anything — so  much  as  a  blade  of  grass.  Still  less  do 
strikes  represent  those  higher  forms  of  mind  and  en- 
ergy on  which  the  larger  part  of  the  productivity  of 
modern  labor  depends.  They  represent  not  labor,  but 
the  power  to  abstain  from  laboring.  Such  being  the 
case,  they  are  limited  not  only  in  their  scope,  but  also 
in  respect  of  the  time  for  which  they  are  able  to  exert 
themselves.  The  more  extended  a  strike  is,  the  more 
inevitable  is  its  early  end — an  end  caused  not  by  the 
surrender  of  labor  to  capital  or  of  capital  to  labor,  but 
of  labor  to  the  necessities  of  nature,  which  decrees  that 

109 


the  majority  must  work,  unless  one  and  all  are  to  starve, 
The  many  laborers,  in  striking  against  the  few  di- 
rectors of  labor,  can  avoid  ruin  to  themselves  and  se- 
cure advantages  only  by  hampering  the  latter,  not  by 
paralyzing  them.  If  the  men,  for  instance,  employed 
in  some  great  chemical  works,  could  permanently  para- 
lyze the  employer  who  was  the  brain  of  the  industry, 
the  business  would  fall  to  pieces :  and  the  men,  instead 
of  securing  a  higher  wage,  would  destroy  the  source 
from  which  the  wages  flow.  But  by  harassing  the 
employer — by  making  his  business  difficult  without  mak- 
ing it  impossible — strikes,  or  the  menace  of  strikes,  are 
doubtless  a  powerful  weapon  in  securing  for  the 
laborers  wages  and  general  conditions  superior  to  those 
which  they  would  probably  have  obtained  otherwise. 
The  harassing,  however,  as  experience  shows,  cannot 
be  carried  beyond  a  certain  point  without  reacting  on 
the  men  themselves.  Injudicious  strikes  have  over  and 
over  again  killed  the  industries  on  which  the  strikers 
depended — or  at  all  events  killed  them  so  far  as  their 
original  localities  were  concerned. 

Now  to  many  people  it  will  seem  that  the  great  fact 
here  revealed  is  the  extraordinary  weakness  of  the  posi- 
tion of  the  capitalistic  director  of  labor.  If  a  strike  in 
one  industry,  or  at  all  events  a  succession  of  strikes, 
can  thus  paralyze  the  employer  and  render  his  capital 
useless,  what  may  not  a  strike  do  which  is  national  or 
international  in  its  proportions?  The  directing  class, 
when  its  position  is  thus  considered,  appears  like  a 
hare  quaking  at  the  footsteps  of  a  giant,  and  ready  to 
disappear  on  his  approach.  But  let  us  only  consider 
the  life  of  any  nation,  not  as  it  may  be  for  a  few  ex- 
ceptional days  or  weeks,  but  as  it  must  be  when  taken 
as  a  whole — the  normal  life  which  must  be  soon  re- 
sumed, let  the  interruptions  of  it  be  never  so  violent — 
and  we  shall  see  that  this  weakness  of  the  directing 
class  is  really  the  main  element  of  its  strength;  and 
that  the  circumstances  which  give  labor  its  maximum 

no 


of  antagonistic  force  are  really  the  main  elements  of 
its  weakness.  The  smallest  body  of  soldiers  that  ever 
took  the  field  could  kill  the  greatest  general  that  ever 
led  them  to  victory.  If  a  ship's  crew  mutinied  in  mid- 
ocean,  any  cabin  boy  could  smash  the  ship's  chronom- 
eters, throw  the  sextants  overboard,  and  put  a  match 
to  the  charts.  But  with  these  frail  implements  gone, 
what  would  the  mutineers  do?  They  would  be  as  lost 
and  helpless  on  the  ocean  as  a  bewildered  child  lost  on 
a  prairie  of  endless  snow.  The  case  is  similar  with 
the  great  mass  of  mankind  who  exercise  the  average 
manual  faculties  of  which  the  average  man  as  a  pro- 
ductive agent  is  capable,  and  the  minority  of  leading 
minds  by  whom  their  labor  is  guided  and  coordinated, 
and  made  indefinitely  prolific,  instead  of  comparatively 
sterile.  During  the  French  Revolution  a  chemist  was 
condemned  to  death  on  the  ground  that  he  was  an 
aristocrat.  Attempts  we're  made  to  induce  the  revolu- 
tionary tribunal  to  spare  him  on  the  ground  of  his 
scientific  eminence;  and  the  answer  of  the  tribunal  was 
this — "The  Republic  has  no  need  of  chemists."  Noth- 
ing could  better  express  the  state  of  mind  prevalent 
among  those  who  are  so  heedlessly  proclaiming  to-day 
the  economic  omnipotence  of  labor  as  opposed  to  the 
forces  and  classes  by  whom  labor  is  directed;  and  the 
insensate  folly  of  the  view  which  is  thus  so  confidently 
promulgated  has,  since  the  days  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, been  illustrated  in  the  most  striking  and  dramatic 
manner  by  some  of  the  most  striking  facts  of  subsequent 
economic  history.  Not  only  has  France  itself  since  then 
been  obliged  to  restore  conditions  which  make  the  life 
of  the  chemist  secure,  but  the  great  rival  of  France, 
and  the  industrial  rival  of  Great  Britain — namely,  Ger- 
many— has,  solely  by  the  genius  of  its  chemists,  as  ap- 
plied to  economic  processes,  established  industries — 
notably  those  connected  with  dyeing — which  are  the 
source  of  livelihood  to  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands 
of  laborers,  who  would,  were  the  talents  of  a  few  hun- 

ni 


dred  chemists  paralyzed,  not  know  to-morrow  where  to 
turn  for  a  crust  of  bread.  Henry  George  said,  not  very 
consistently  with  a  certain  portion  of  his  arguments — 
those  in  which  he  so  strenuously  defends  the  rights  of 
the  private  capitalist — that  to  place  the  control  of  the 
many  in  the  hands  of  the  few  was  to  stand  a  pyramid 
on  its  apex.  To  him  this  seemed  an  absurdity;  and, 
if  we  take  a  spectacular  view  of  things — if  we  view 
things  from  the  outside  only — no  doubt  it  is  so.  But 
the  dynamic  truth  is  the  exact  reverse  of  the  spectacular 
truth.  Dynamically  it  is  precisely  the  apex  or  the  head 
on  which  the  social  pyramid  actually  does  stand.  Sol- 
diers realize  this  when  they  guard  the  life  of  their 
general.  His  life,  they  recognize,  is  as  important  to 
them  as  it  is  to  himself.  And  I  believe  I  am  right  in 
saying  that  the  more  practical  and  hard-headed  repre- 
sentatives of  labor  realize  that,  given  the  possibility  on 
their  part  of  making  a  reasonable  bargain  with  em- 
ployers, their  own  prospects  are  good,  bad,  or  indif- 
ferent, according  as  their  labor  is  directed  by  the  intel- 
lect, the  knowledge,  and  the  strenuous  and  keen  sagacity 
of  the  picked  men  of  the  day.  In  all  production  there 
are  two  partners — the  laborers  and  the  director  of  labor ; 
and  those  laborers  have  the  most  ample  opportunity  of 
securing  and  increasing  their  own  welfare  whose  labor 
is  coordinated  and  directed  to  the  best  productive  ad- 
vantage, just  as  the  crew  of  a  racing  yacht  have  the 
best  chance  of  securing  the  honorarium  due  to  them 
in  the  event  of  victory,  who  sail  under  the  best  captain, 
and  who  man  the  boat  designed  by  the  most  accom- 
plished naval  architect. 


112 


LECTURE  VI. 

Delivered  before  The  League  for  Political  Education, 
New  York  City 

I  have  received  suggestions  from  many  quarters, 
whilst  I  have  been  engaged  speaking  about  socialism 
generally  that  I  should  say  something  about  the  form 
of  it  which  is  specialized  by  the  name  of  Christian. 
Now  the  phrase  of  Christian  Socialism  has  a  long  his- 
tory behind  it.  It  was  used  first  in  England,  by  Maurice 
and  Charles  Kingsley;  but  in  their  later  lives  I  believe 
myself  to  be  right  in  saying  that  they  quietly  dropped  it 
as  inapplicable  to  their  own  more  matured  views.  At 
all  events  it  is  a  phrase  which  has  had  many  meanings ; 
and  when  I  was  asked  to  discuss  it  as  an  actual  creed, 
or  doctrine,  held  and  preached  to-day,  it  seemed  to  me 
to  be  too  indeterminate  to  admit  of  being  discussed  to 
any  purpose.  For  all  I  knew  to  the  contrary  Christian 
Socialism  as  a  doctrine  preached  to-day  in  America 
might  be  as  different  from  ordinary  socialism  as  Chris- 
tian Science  is  from  science  as  understood  generally — 
as  different  as  the  science  of  Mrs.  Eddy  is  from  the 
science  of  Mr.  Edison.  I  knew  indeed  from  my  ex- 
perience both  of  this  country  and  of  England  that  the 
clergy,  as  representatives  of  Christianity,  have  fre- 
quently of  late  years  been  entering  on  the  domain  of 
economic  discussion,  and  had  been  seeking  to  apply  in 
one  way  or  another  the  precepts  of  their  religion  to  the 
industrial  problems  of  to-day  and  not,  as  it  seemed  to 
me,  with  very  signal  success.  The  late  Bishop  of  Dur- 
ham, for  instance,  who  I  think  actually  called  himself 
a  socialist,  once  proposed  that,  as  an  instalment  of  the 
new  industrial  millennium,  the  British  navy  should  be 
constructed  by  a  group  of  co-operative  laborers.  The 
only  impression  which  this  suggestion  produced  on  my 
own  mind  was  that  the  enemies  of  England  would  re- 
ceive with  unbounded  delight  the  news  that  the  Bishop's 


suggestion  was  really  being  carried  into  effect.  But, 
as  I  said,  my  knowledge  of  what  Christian  Socialism 
means  to-day  in  America  was  far  too  vague  to  enable 
me  to  make  it  the  subject  of  any  definite  criticism. 

I  have,  however,  received  lately  a  more  or  less  elab- 
orate article  by  one  of  its  recognized  exponents  and 
this  has  been  sufficient  to  invest  with  some  definite  form 
opinions  the  nature  of  which  I  could  previously  but 
shrewdly  conjecture.  I  propose,  therefore,  presently 
to  deal  with  this  article  as  a  text.  But  first,  with  your 
permission  before  dealing  with  socialism  in  its  Chris- 
tian form,  I  will,  for  clearness'  sake,  say  a  few  words 
about  socialism  of  the  secular  and  more  ordinary  type. 
In  doing  this  I  shall  necessarily  have  to  repeat,  but  only 
in  a  summary  way,  the  main  criticisms  I  have  been 
making  in  other  places  on  ordinary  socialism  already.  I 
shall  now,  however,  be  able  to  add  to  these  one  new 
feature — namely,  an  examination  of  the  best  counter- 
criticisms  with  which  the  more  educated  socialists  in 
this  country  have  been  able  to  urge  in  reply  to  me: 
and  I  hope  to  show  you  that,  instead  of  disposing  of 
what  I  have  said,  these  counter-criticisms  really  do 
nothing  but  establish  and  illustrate  the  validity  of  the 
main  points  on  which  I  myself  have  insisted. 

Let  me  begin  then  with  my  criticism  of  secular  so- 
cialism in  general :  and  then,  having  seen  what  secular 
socialism  is,  we  shall  be  able  to  consider  how  Christian 
socialism  differs  from  it. 

I  begin  by  dividing  secular  socialism,  as  a  definite  eco- 
nomic creed,  into  two  kinds — that,  namely,  which  is 
preached  to  the  multitudes,  and  to  the  ordinary  passing 
workman :  and  that  which  is  enunciated  to  a  public  com- 
paratively small,  by  socialists  who  bring  to  their  sub- 
ject a  good  deal  of  education,  and  also  of  intellectual 
acuteness,  and  are  anxious  to  vindicate  socialism  in 
the  face  of  other  thinking  men.  -I  said,  moreover,  that, 
for  practical  purposes,  by  far  the  most  important  ques- 
tion was  that  of  what  socialism  is  as  expounded  to 

114 


the  general  multitude.  Its  more  intellectualized  forms 
having  an  importance  which  is  at  present  secondary. 

Such  being  the  case,  I  pointed  out  that,  as  an  instru- 
ment of  popular  agitation,  socialism  was  based  on  the 
doctrine  which  Karl  Marx  managed  to  invest  with  a 
semblance  of  scientific  truth,  to  the  effect  that  all  wealth 
is  produced  by  ordinary  manual  labor,  and  that  all 
wealth  ought  consequently  to  go  to  the  laborers.  This 
doctrine  I  examined  with  the  utmost  care,  and  I  think 
I  may  say  that  I  stated  it  with  the  most  elaborate  fair- 
ness. I  especially  showed  that,  in  some  respects,  it  was 
not  so  crude  as  it  seemed  to  be.  Thus  I  mentioned  that 
the  Marxian  doctrine,  though  insisting  that  manual 
labor  is  the  sole  producer  of  wealth,  naturally  implies 
a  human  jnind  directing  the  laborer's  muscles ;  and  I 
pointed  out  further  that,  though  Marx,  as  a  general 
fact,  maintained  that  the  labor  of  all  laborers  was  so 
equal  that  the  amount  of  wealth  produced  by  it  might 
be  measured  in  terms  of  time,  yet  he. in  {his,  precisely 
resembling  Ruskin,  recognized  the  existence  of  excep- 
tional manual  skill,  and  that  his  principles  would  justify 
an  hour  of  skilled  labor  receiving  a  reward  beyond  that 
of  labor  of  the  ordinary  kind.  .The  meaning  of  Marx 
with  regard  to  skill  has  been  well  and  elaborately  eluci- 
dated by  his  follower,  Laurence  Gronlund,  who  explains 
skilled  labor  as  a  faculty  which  has  taken  a  long  time 
to  acquire,  so  that  every  hour  employed  in  its  perfected 
exercise  represents  not  that  hour  only,  but  also  the  pre- 
vious hours  which  were  spent  in  bringing  it  to  perfec- 
tion. Thus  if  we  divided  a  skilled  man's  working  life 
into  two  halves,  of  which  one  was  spent  in  acquiring  his 
skill  and  the  other  half  in  exercising  it,  each  hour  dur- 
ing which  he  exercised  it  would  in  justice  count  as  two. 

But  even  if  we  give  to  Marx,  and  those  who  reason 
about  labor  as  he  did,  the  full  credit  due  them  for  this 
recognition  of  skill,  I  pointed  out  that  their  doctrine 
was  just  as  important  to  explain  the  productivity  of 
industry  as  it  exists  to-day,  as  it  would  have  been  had 

"5 


they  taken  no  account  of  skilled  labor  at  all.  The  doc- 
trine of  Marx,  as  to  the  all-productivity  of  labor  is,  so 
I  pointed  out,  virtually  quite  adequate  to  explain  the 
production  of  wealth  in  very  early  communities,  and 
even  in  certain  remote  and  primitive  groups  to-day; 
but  the  amount  of  wealth  per  head  of  the  industrial 
population  in  such  communities  is  proverbially  small  in 
amount,  and  very  meager  in  kind.  It  affords  a  contrast, 
and  not  a  parallel  to,  the  amount  and  kind  of  wealth 
produced  under  the  modern  system.  What  is  produced 
per  head  in  the  latter  case  is  indefinitely  higher  in 
quality,  and  more  than  ten  times  greater  in  quantity, 
than  what  is  produced  in  the  former:  and  the  question 
is,  therefore,  what  is  the  cause  of  the  difference — the 
small  output  and  the  great?  No  reference  to  skill  or  the 
exceptional  craftsmanship  of  individuals  will  provide 
us  with  any  answer :  for  mere  exceptional  skill,  as  we 
see  in  the  case  of  an  illuminated  missal,  or  a  cup  by 
Benvenuto  Cellini,  whilst  it  will  produce  individual 
commodities  of  almost  priceless  value,  will  produce  only 
a  few  of  them,  and  the  cost  of  these  will  be  extrava- 
gant, whilst  the  kind  of  commodities  which  are  typical 
of  modern  production  is  a  kind  which  is  distinctively 
cheap  and  susceptible  of  indefinite  multiplication.  In- 
deed, in  the  production"  of  any  article  of  modern  wealth, 
the  necessity  for  rare  skill  is  a  drawback,  and  makes 
the  supply  of  the  supply  at  once  costly  and  uncertain. 
The  great  factor  which  differentiates  modern  produc- 
tion from  production  of  all  other  kinds  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  operation  of  ordinary  or  even  skilled  labor, 
but  consists  in  the  mental  faculties  by  which  labor  is 
directed :  and  to  these  faculties  I  give  the  name  of 
ability — a  name  which  has  this  advantage  that  it  has, 
of  recent  years,  been  adopted  by  a  considerable  number 
of  the  thoughtful  socialists  themselves,  as  indicating 
certain  powers  residing  in  the  minds  of  the  few,  on 
which  it  is  admitted  by  them  that  the  efficiency  of  ordi- 
nary labor  depends.  I  further  pointed  out  that  between 

116 


labor  and  directive  ability  the  difference  was  one  not 
of  degree  but  of  kind,  and  that  labor,  whether  skilled  or 
unskilled,  stood  for  the  mind  of  a  man  directing  the  op- 
erations of  his  own  private  pair  of  hands,  these  oper- 
ations ending  with  the  handiwork  on  which  the  man  is 
engaged,  and  not  affecting  the  handiwork  of  any  man 
except  himself.  Ability,  I  said,  on  the  other  hand, 
stands  for  the  mind  of  some  one  man,  not  affecting  any 
labor  of  his  own  hands  at  all,  but  influencing  simul- 
taneously the  labor  of  any  number  of  other  men. 
And  of  this  fact  I  took  as  an  illustration  the 
case  of  a  printed  book.  Whether  ten  thousand  copies 
of  a  printed  book  have,  in  an  economic  sense,  any 
value  at  all— whether  or  no  they  are  exchangeable 
for  anything  else — whether  anyone  is  willing  to  buy 
them,  or  whether  they  are  so  much  refuse  encumber- 
ing the  publisher's  warehouse,  does  not  depend  on  the 
labor  of  the  compositors,  which  may  be  equally  skillful 
in  the  one  sense  or  the  other,  but  it  depends  on  certain 
qualities  resident  in  the  author's  manuscript,  this  manu- 
script constituting  a  series  of  minute  directions,  which 
from  second  to  second  the  hands  of  the  compositors 
conform  to;  and  in  this  way  labor  of  precisely  the  same 
amount  and  grade  imparts  to  so  many  tons  of  printed 
paper  the  quality  of  much  wealth,  or  little  wealth,  or 
perhaps  no  wealth  at  all,  in  accordance  solely  with 
the  manner  in  which  this  labor  of  arranging  the  type  is 
directed  by  a  mind  altogether  external  to  the  minds  of 
the  compositors  themselves.  And  the  same  reasoning 
applies,  I  said,  to  all  modern  industries  whatsoever — to 
the  building  of  a  great  ship,  to  the  production  of  com- 
plicated machinery,  or  to  the  use  of  such  machinery 
in  producing  goods  which  correspond  with  the  tastes 
and  the  needs  of  the  public  customer.  The  productiv- 
ity, in  short,  of  the  labor  of  the  many  in  the  modern 
world  depends  altogether  on  the  directive  faculties  of 
the  few.  The  many  do  little  more  than  supply  a  mini- 
mum, or  a  unit,  which  the  ability  of  the  few  multiplies. 

117 


That  is  to  say,  whilst  the  many,  in  modern  as  well  as  in 
primitive  societies  produce  a  minimum  of  wealth,  with- 
out which  there  would  be  no  wealth  to  increase,  the  in- 
crement, by  which  modern  production  is  differentiated 
from  primitive,  is  due  to  the  direction  of  the  few,  and 
not  to  the  labor  of  the  many. 

This  is  the  substance  of  my  criticism  of  the  Marxim 
doctrine  of  labor,  which  I  have  lately  been  engaged  in 
putting  forward  in  this  country,  and  what  have  the 
socialists  of  this  country  said  in  reply  to  this  definite 
contention?  Of  the  many  replies  which  I  have  seen,  the 
outcome  of  all  is  similar — namely  that,  with  regard  to 
the  functions  which  I  have  ascribed  to  directive  ability, 
as  a  productive  force  distinct  from  labor,  I  am  right, 
and  that  socialists  to-day  are  themselves  quite  aware  of 
the  fact,  without  wanting  me  to  inform  them  of  it.  My 
critics,  as  might  naturally  be  expected,  vary  greatly  in 
education  and  intelligence,  and  consequently  in  the 
clearness  and  the  fullness  with  which  this  admission  is 
made  by  them,  and  to  deal  with  them  all  in  detail  would 
be  at  once  impossible  and  useless.  The  only  practicable 
and  the  only  course  is  to  look  out  for  some  one  critic 
amongst  them,  who  is  recognized  alike  by  his  own  party 
and  by  others,  as  a  man  representative,  in  virtue  of  his 
culture  and  intelligence,  of  the  best  that  his  party  can 
say  on  its  own  behalf,  and  such  a  man  amongst  my 
critics  has  been  pointed  out  to  me  by  various  people, 
and  in  various  parts  of  this  country,  and  I  have  been 
told  that  if  I  would  test  the  real  intellectual  strength  of 
socialism  to  go  straight  to  him.  And  fortunately  the 
gentleman  in  question  has  rendered  the  following  of 
this  advice  easy  for  me,  for  he  has  devoted  a  succession 
of  column?  in  a  paper  called  the  "Worker"  to  an  attack 
on  those  particular  arguments  of  mine  which  I  have 
just  now  summarized.  This  gentleman  is  Mr.  Hillquit, 
who  is,  I  am  told,  a  lawyer,  and  because  he  is  looked 
upon  by  his  friends  as  their  intellectual  Ajax,  an 

118 


examination  of  what  he  has  to  say  is  particularly  in- 
teresting and  instructive. 

Well,  out  of  the  four  columns  which  Mr.  Hillquit 
devotes  to  me,  the  whole  with  the  exception  of  some 
twenty  lines  at  the  utmost,  is  devoted  to  nothing  but  the 
kind  of  irrelevant  talk  with  which  lawyers  so  often  aim 
at  confusing  the  minds  of  jurymen.  For  example,  he  de- 
votes a  large  part  of  his  space  to  declaring  that  I  have 
never  read  a  line  of  Karl  Marx  myself;  that  my  erron- 
eous knowledge  of  his  teachings  is  derived  at  second 
|iand  from  reviews  of  him;  that  I  say  that  his  work 
on  Capital  was  published  about  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  when  it  was  really  published  in  1867,  and 
he  goes  on  to  inform  me  that  the  first  English  trans- 
lation of  him  was  not  published  till  a  good  many  years 
later.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  know  Marx  much  better 
probably  than  Mr.  Hillquit  himself  does,  and  of  the 
English  translation  as  to  the  date  of  which  Mr.  Hill- 
quit  instructs  me,  I  was  I  believe  one  of  the  first  people 
in  England  to  have  a  copy  sent  to  him.  Further  Mr. 
Hillquit  occupies  still  more  space  in  asserting  that  all 
I  know  with  regard  to  the  socialistic  doctrines  actually 
put  forward  to-day  I  have  derived  from  "popular 
pamphlets."  Now,  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  any 
serious  argument?  In  especial  let  me  ask  where 
could  I  have  found  better  or  clearer  evidence  as 
to  what  socialism  is  as  actually  preached  to  the  people 
than  in  the  popular  pamphlets  which  from  day  to  day 
are  addressed  to  them?  What  is  Mr.  Hillquit's  criticism 
of  myself  but  a  popular  pamphlet?  Then,  having 
wasted  his  space  over  mere  verbal  gesticulations  such  as 
these,  he  proceeds  to  demonstrate  how  little  I  under- 
stand Marx,  by  giving  an  account  of  his  own  of  what 
Marx  really  teaches  and,  excepting  in  one  particular,  to 
which  I  will  refer  presently  and  as  to  which  Mr.  Hill- 
quit  is  fundamentally  wrong,  Mr.  Hillquit's  account  of 
the  teachings  of  Marx  is  exactly  the  same  as  my  own. 
There  are  only  three  short  fragments  out  of  his  whole 

119 


four  columns  in  which  he  ventures  on  anything  like  in- 
telligible argument  and  with   these   I  will  now   deal. 

The  first  definite  criticism  on  which  Mr.  Hillquit  ven- 
tures is  as  follows:  "It  requires  no  special  genius,"  he 
says,  "to  demonstrate  that  all  labor  is  not  alike  and 
equally  productive.  It  is  still  more  obvious  that  com- 
mon manual  labor  alone  is  important  to  produce  the 
wealth  of  modern  nations — that  organization,  direction, 
control,  are  essential  to  productive  work  in  the  field  of 
economic  production,  and  that  mental  labor  is  just  as 
much  a  factor  in  the  production,  of  wealth  as  mere 
physical  effort."  In  other  words,  Air.  Hillquit  is  voci- 
ferous in  accepting  what  I  have  said  as  to  the  functions 
of  directive  ability,  or  the  productive  powers  of  the  few, 
and  declares  that  for  socialists  my  insistence  on  these  is 
a  platitude.  Having  done  this,  the  next  article  in  his 
argument  consists  of  the  assertion  that  this  recognition 
of  ability  finds  a  prominent  place  in  the  theory  of  Marx 
himself,  and  he  proceeds  to  quote  a  passage  which  he 
adorns  with  many  capital  letters  with  a  view  to  demon- 
strating that  this  assertion  is  correct.  My  statement,  he 
says,  that  Marx  considers  nothing  but  manual  labor,  i? 
triumphantly  refuted  by  these  words  of  Marx  himself: 
"By  labor  power  or  capacity  for  labor  is  to  be  under- 
stood the  aggregate  of  those  mental  and  physical  capac- 
ities existing  in  a  human  being  which  he  exercises 
whenever  he  produces  a  use-value  of  any  description." 
Precisely.  But  what  Marx  is  here  describing  is  the 
mental  qualities  of  the  laborer  as  affecting  that  labor- 
er's own  hands,  and  means  neither  more  nor  less  than 
the  skill  of  one  individual  as  described  by  myself.  It 
has  no  reference  to  the  mental  faculties  which  I  spoke 
of  under  the  name  of  ability,  and  the  functions  of  which 
Mr.  Hillquit  says  that  socialists  recognize  as  fully  as 
anybody,  and  which  consist  of  the  mental  faculties  of 
one  man  directing  and  organizing  the  labor,  skilled  or 
unskilled,  of  any  number  of  other  men.  This  champion 
of  intellectual  socialism,  if  he  is  not  in  a  state  of  com- 

120 


OF  THE 

f   UNIVERSITY 

0« 


plete  muddle  himself,  is  merely  endeavoring,  like  a  law- 
yer, to  confuse  the  minds  of  his  jury,  by  pretending 
that  he  is  continuing  to  speak  about  one  thing,  namely, 
the  direction  of  the  many  by  the  few,  when  he  has  in 
reality  gone  back  to  quite  another,  namely,  the  labor  of 
the  many  men  themselves. 

But  the  true  character  of  Mr.  Hillquit's  whole  argu- 
ment is  best  exhibited  when  he  really  does  at  last  come 
to  close  quarters  with  myself,  and  proposes  to  take  as  a 
test  case  the  illustration  which  I  myself  have  chosen. 
This  is  the  illustration  taken,  as  I  explained  just  now, 
from  the  case  of  a  printed  book,  the  value  of  which  as 
an  economic  commodity  depends,  I  said,  not  on  the 
labor  of  the  compositors,  but  on  the  manner  in  which 
this  labor  is  directed  by  the  author,  issuing  his  direc- 
tions through  his  manuscript.  And  what  has  Mr.  Hill- 
quit  got  to  say  about  this?  "Whether  a  book,"  says 
Mr.  Hillquit,  "is  a  work  of  genius  or  mere  rubbish,  will 
largely  affect  its  literary  or  artistic  value,  but  it  will 
have  very  little  bearing  on  its  economic  or  commercial 
value.  Its  market  price  will  be  fixed  by  the  work  of  the 
compositors,  and  the  paper  makers."  And  Mr.  Hillquit 
then  goes  on  to  say,  the  market  price  of  a  wretched 
detective  story,  of  the  same  length  as  Hamlet  and 
printed  in  the  same  way,  will  be  precisely  the  same  as 
that  of  a  copy  of  Hamlet  itself.  It  is  difficult  to  imag- 
ine a  confusion  of  thought  more  complete  than  this. 
We  need  not  talk  about  the  absolute  genius  of  the 
author.  It  will  be  quite  sufficient  to  talk  about  his 
power  of  gaining  popularity;  for  this  power  will  be  a 
power  embodied  in  his  manuscript  just  as  well  as  genius 
would,  and  he  will  be  none  the  less  a  director  of  the 
manual  labor  of  the  compositors.  Now,  what  Mr.  Hill- 
quit  is  doing,  or  perhaps  pretending  to  do,  is  to  confuse 
the  minimum  price  at  which  an  edition,  say,  of  ten  thou- 
sand copies  of  a  book  can  be  produced,  with  the  com- 
mercial value  of  the  ten  thousand  copies  when  com- 
pleted. The  cost  of  production,  and  consequently  the 

121 


lowest  price  at  which  the  copies  .can  be  sold  at  a  profit 
or  without  loss,  is  no  doubt  determined  by  the  cost  of 
the  labor  of  the  compositors ;  but  whether  ten  thousand 
persons,  or  five  thousand,  or  only  five,  will  be  willing  to 
pay  this  price,  depends  not  on  the  compositors,  but  on 
the  author,  who  according  to  his  genius  or  merely  some 
peculiar  knack,  hits  or  fails  to  hit  the  taste  of  the  pur- 
chasing public.  If  the  book  is  priced  at  a  dollar,  and  the 
public  will  buy  the  whole  ten  thousand  copies,  the  com- 
mercial value  of  the  edition  will  be  ten  thousand  dollars. 
If  the  public  man  provide  five  purchasers  only,  the  com- 
mercial value  of  the  edition  will  be  five  dollars  only, 
plus  what  the  rest  of  the  edition  can  be  sold  for  as  so 
much  dirtied  paper.  And  what  determines  whether  the 
edition  shall  commercially  have  a  value  of  ten  thousand 
dollars  or  five,  depends,  as  any  child  can  see,  not  on  the 
labor  of  the  compositors  but  on  the  directing  mind  of 
the  author,  or — to  speak  of  it  from  the  economic  point 
of  view — the  author's  directive  ability.  And  this  ludi- 
crous assertion  that  books  are  commercially  valuable 
only  in  proportion  to  the  labor  of  typesetting  and  paper- 
making  embodied  in  them  is  the  final  flower  of  this  criti- 
cism of  Mr.  Hillquit's  which  he  puts  forward  as  being 
at  once  a  defense  and  an  exposition  of  socialism  in 
the  most  reasonable  form  with  which  the  intellect  of 
this  country  can  endow  it,  and  is  a  crushing  rejoinder 
to  the  criticisms  which  I  have  urged  against  it.  It  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  a  man  of  Mr.  Hillquit's  reputa- 
tion can  really  be  the  victim  of  an  abject  absurdity  such 
as  this.  I  should  rather  gather  that  the  theory  which 
he  has  taken  up  is  like  some  mechanism  to  which  he 
has  bound  his  mental  limbs,  and  which  contorts  him 
as  a  reasoner  into  all  sorts  of  ridiculous  attitudes;  but 
his  arguments,  for  this  very  reason,  are  singularly  full 
of  instruction ;  for  this  conclusion  of  his,  as  :to  com- 
positors and  the  commercial  value  of  books,  with  which 
he  winds  up  his  attack  on  me,  is  nothing  more  than  a 
reversion  to  the  doctrine  that  manual  labor  alone  pro- 

122 


duces  all  commercial  values,  which  doctrine  he  starts 
as  rejecting  as  a  fallacy  which  is  too  obvious  for  any 
socialist  to  hold,  and  in  the  exposure  of  which  he  says 
I  am  only  wasting  my  pains.  That  Mr.  Hillquit  does 
not  really  entertain  this  opinion  himself  I  take  to  be 
more  than  probable,  and  the  explanation  of  his  ending 
with  reassuring  what  he  sets  out  with  repudiating,  is 
this — that,"  if  once  the  functions  of  the  directive  ability 
of  the  few  are  clea'rly  recognized  and  asserted,  and  if 
labor  in  the  modern  world  is  exhibited  as  practically 
helpless  without  it,  socialism,  as  an  instrument  of  popu- 
lar agitation  would  be  paralyzed.  He  is,  therefore,  like 
other  socialists,  bound  to  speak  with  two  voices.  He  is 
eager  to  admit  the  productive  functions  of  ability,  when 
he  is  addressing  himself  to  educated  men;  but  all  the 
while,  by  a  series  of  verbal  substitutions  and  quibbles, 
he  is  preparing  to  reassert  that  nothing  produces  wealth 
but  labor,  as  soon  as  he  finds  himself  in  the  presence  of 
any  knot  of  laborers  around  the  corner. 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  specimen  of  the  arguments  of 
secular  socialists,  who  as  thinkers  admit  that  the  princi- 
pal producers  of  modern  wealth  are  the  few;  and  as 
agitators  persist  in  asserting  that  everything  is  produced 
by  the  many. 

And  now,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  have  done  with 
secular  socialism,  and  will  turn  to  that  which  distin- 
guishes itself  by  the  name  of  Christian.  And  I  think 
you  will  soon  see  why,  in  order  to  deal  with  this,  I  have 
offered  you  all  these  observations  about  secular  social- 
ism as  a  preface.  The  exposition  of  Christian  social- 
ism, on  which  I  shall  base  the  following  remarks,  is 
taken  from  a  paper  called  The  Christian  Socialist,  and 
from  an  article  in  that  paper  which  is  called  ''The  Gos- 
pel for  To-day."  It  has  been  specially  recommended  to 
my  attention  as  explaining  and  representing  the  Chris- 
tian socialist  attitude,  and  it  struck  me  at  once  as  giving 
in  definite  form  the  temper  and  opinions  by  which  I  had 
imagined  that  Christian  socialism  was  distinguished. 

123 


Let  me  begin,  then,  with  saying  that  Christian  social- 
ism, if  we  may  judge  it  from  "The  Gospel  for  To-day," 
whilst  resembling  secular  socialism  of  the  more  thought- 
ful kind,  in  acknowledging  that  the  efficiency  of  the  few, 
or  men  of  economic  ability,  is  an  incomparably  greater 
producer  than  the  manual  labor  of  the  many,  makes  no 
attempt  to  obscure  or  to  minimize  this  admission.  Thus 
the  writer  from  whom  I  am  quoting  declares  that  one 
j  cardinal  error  underlies  all  the  principles  of  the  indi- 
vidualistic democracy  of  to-day ;  and  this  error,  he  says, 
is  "the,  assumption  that  all  men  are  born  equal  in  abil- 
ity." Men,  he  proceeds,  are  not  equal  in  ability.  In  the 
economic  sense,  as  in  all  others,  some  men  are  incom- 
parably more  able  than  the  great  majority  of  their  fel- 
lows;  and  even  amongst  the  exceptionally  able  men 
some  are  more  able  than  others  are.  Consequently,  if 
the  principles  of  modern  individualistic  democracy,  and 
modern  individualistic  economics,  are  right,  according  to 
which  the  main  motive  of  each  is  to  do  .'the  best  for 
himself  with  his  own  powers  that  he  can — "if  it  is  duty 
to  compete,  if  competition  is  the  life  of  trade,  then  the 
battle  for  self  must  ever  go  grimly  on,  the  strong  must 
subdue  the  weak,  the  rich  the  poor,  the  able  the  unable. 
Upon  this  basis  the  millionaires  and  the  multi-million- 
aires have  a  perfect  right  to  roll  up  their  untold  mil- 
lions even  as  the  workingman  has  a  right  to  seek"  what- 
ever wages  he  can  get.  "All  in  different  ways  are  seek- 
ing their  own ;  and  the  keenest  competitors  are  the  best 
men.  The  prizes  must  go  to  the  strongest  and  shrewd- 
est competitors.  It  is  the  survival  of  the  fittest." 

Such  being  the  case,  then,  asks  the  writer,  what  does 
Christian  socialism  aim  at?  It  does  not  aim  at  making 
men  equal  in  respect  of  their  ability,  for  to  do  this 
would  be  quite  impossible,  but  it  aims  at  producing  an 
equality  of  a  practical  kind,  by  inducing  the  men  whose 
ability  is  most  efficient  and  greatest  to  forego  all  per- 
sonal claims  which  are  founded  on  their  exceptional 
powers.  It  aims  at  substituting  what  he  calls  co-opera- 

124 


tion  for  competition.  This,  he  says,  is  the  economic 
teaching  of  Christ,  whose  passion  and  death  are 
described  in  a  poem  in  the  same  paper,  as  having  for 
their  main  object  the  economic  freedom  of  labor. 

The  reckless  sentiment  which  embodies  itself  in  this 
poem — not  the  work  of  the  author  of  "The  Gospel  for 
To-day" — pervades  in  a  curious  way  the  reasoning  of 
this  author  himself.  He  sees  certain  broad  facts  of  the 
situation  clearly  enough,  and  expresses  them  with  per- 
fect candor;  but  he  submits  nothing  which  he  sees  to 
any  close  inspection  or  analysis.  He  sees  economic 
problems,  and  the  entire  process  of  modern  production, 
as  a  man  sees  a  mountain  from  a  distance,  at  once 
illuminated  and  obscured  by  atmospheric  conditions,  and 
who  fancies  that  to  get  to  its  summit  will  be  a  short 
and  simple  task,  whereas  countless  fissures  intervene 
across  which  there  is  no  bridge,  and  precipices  which 
yield  no  foothold — he  having,  indeed,  no  grasp  whatever 
of  the  mountain's  real  conformation. 

For  example,  to  begin  with  this  question  of  competi- 
tion, the  writer  seems  never  to  have  considered  in  any 
detailed  way,  what  economic  competition  in  the  modern 
world  really  is.  Thus,  he  says  that  competition  might 
work  very  well  and  be  "fair"  if  all  men  were  really  equal. 
"The  play  of  equal  forces  might  bring  about  the  good 
of  the  greatest  number."  But  if  they  were  really  equal, 
in  what  way  could  there  be  any  competition  at  all?  If 
all  men  were  equally  able  and  energetic,  or  equally 
stupid  and  indolent,  the  services  performed  by  no  one 
man  would  be  appreciably  better  than  those  performed 
by  any  other.  This,  however,  is  a  minor  matter ;  though 
it  shows  how  easily  sentiment  may  conduce  to  slovenli- 
ness of  thought.  A  far  more  important  point  is  that  our 
Christian  socialist  keeps  in  his  mind  no  consistent  idea 
of  what  competition  is  as  a  factor  in  productive  indus- 
try. He  apparently  starts  with  recognizing  that  it  is, 
in  its  fundamental  form,  a  competition  in  the  produc- 
tion and  multiplication  of  economic  commodities ;  but  He 
125 


constantly  lapses  into  a  conception  of  it  as  a  mere  suc- 
cessful grabbing  of  an  output  of  commodities  which 
keep  on  being  produced  spontaneously.  Viewed  thus, 
he  says,  the  principles  of  competition  and  individualism 
justify  every  man  in  grabbing  as  much  as  he  can;  and 
the  man  who  grabs  much  has  just  as  good  a  right  to  his 
much  as  the  man  who  can  grab  only  little  has  to  that 
little. 

Now,  some  forms  of  wealth-getting  do  really  conform 
to  this  conception;  but  these  are  not  the  forms  which 
are  fundamentally  involved  in  competition.  There  are 
three  ways  in  which  great  wealth  may  be  acquired  in 
the  modern  world.  One  is  by  speculation ;  one  is  by 
cheating;  but  the  primary  way,  on  which  the  other  two 
depend,  is  by  production  on  a  great  scale,  which  can  only 
be  accomplished  by  ability  at  successfully  directing  labor. 
Thus  a  dozen  rich  men  may  bring  a  million  dollars 
each  to  a  gaming  table ;  and  the  end  may  be  that  the 
twelfth  man  acquires  half  of  the  money  of  each  of  the 
eleven ;  or,  on  the  other  hand  some  adroit  swindler  may 
plunder  the  whole  twelve.  But  the  gambling  and  the 
swindling  do  nothing  to  produce  these  riches.  The 
riches  must  owe  their  origin  to  some  previous  produc- 
tive process.  The  wealth  produced  by  the  modern  com- 
petitive system  has,  therefore,  its  origin  in  a  constant 
process  of  production,  and  if  no  great  wealth  were  pro- 
duced there  would  be  no  wealth  to  grab. 

This  it  is  that  our  Christian  socialist,  though  he  some- 
times imagines  it,  constantly  quite  forgets ;  and  how 
feeble  his  grasp  is  of  the  actual  facts  of  the  situation 
is  shown  by  his  allusion  to  two  of  the  great  modern 
industries  of  America — the  oil  industry  and  the  steel. 
With  regard  to  these  he  observes  that  "our  steel  kings 
did  not  invent  steel,  and  our  oil  kings  did  not  invent 
oil."  He  speaks  of  both  refined  oil  and  steel  as  two 
natural  products,  which  only  waited  some  chance  dis- 
covery, and  which  naturally,  as  articles  of  consumption, 
would  have  been  the  common  property  of  everybody, 

126 


if  it  had  not  happened  that  the  strong  men,  in  virtue  of 
their  strength,  had  seized  upon  these  natural  products, 
actuated  by  the  love  of  monev.  "and  worked  them  for 
what  they  were  worth."  It  is  curiously  illustrative  of 
the  extraordinary  remoteness  of  our  Christian  socialist's 
mind  from  the  kind  of  things  with  which  he  is  dealing, 
thnt  he  evidently  considers  steel  as  a  natural  product, 
and  is  not  aware  that  steel,  and  even  iron  melted  by 
coal,  are,  the  one  a  product  of  the  most  elaborate  scien- 
tific genius,  and  the  other  only  became  a  practical  reality 
after  the  heroic  labors  of  a  few  individuals  in  England, 
who  after  a  century  of  endeavor,  in  the  face  of  opposi- 
tion and  disappointment,  discovered  how  to  make  coal, 
in  iron  smelting,  a  workable  substitute  for  wood.  But 
even  if  we  waive  this  point,  and  suppose  steel  and  iron 
both  to  be  purely  natural  products  so  long  as  they  are  in 
their  raw  state,  does  our  Christian  socialist  suppose 
that  they  are  still  natural  products  when  they  are 
worked  up  into  rails,  or  rolled  as  armor  plating,  or 
fashioned  into  a  thousand  and  one  shapes  in  which  our 
Christian  socialist  uses  them  whenever  he  cuts  his 
bread,  or  turns  a  tap  in  his  bathroom  to  let  the  water 
into  his  bath?  He  will  find  more  intense  thought, 
more  concentrated  practical  knowledge,  grouped  to- 
gether in  a  knot  of  exceptional  men,  in  the  steel  works 
at  Pittsburg,  than  he  will  find  in  all  the  sermons  and 
articles  on  Christian  socialism  that  have  ever  been  deliv- 
ered or  excogitated.  And  the  same  may  be  said  of  the 
oil  industry  of  this  country.  If  it  was  only  necessary 
to  find  out  that  certain  oil  wells  existed,  in  order  to 
give  every  Christian  socialist  a  nice  lamp  in  his  parlor, 
our  friend's  view  of  the  case  might  be  correct.  But 
what  good  is  an  oil  well  in  some  one  particular  place, 
until  the  oil  is  refined  by  the  most  delicate  chemical 
processes,  and  distributed  to  consumers  all  over  the 
world  by  a  system  so  elaborate  that  the  world  has  never 
seen  its  like?  Again,  the  price  at  which  such  oil  can 
be  sold  depends  largely  for  its  cheapness  on  the  fact 

127 


that  science  has  discovered  how  to  utilize  its  by-prod- 
ucts, the  profits  arising  from  these  enabling  the  oil  to 
be  sold  at  a  price  that  would  be  otherwise  impossible. 
In  cases  like  these  we  have  no  mere  case  of  acquisition ; 
the  essential  process  at  work  is  one  of  elaborate  cre- 
ation. 

And  now  let  us  turn  to  what  our  author  has  to  say 
with  regard  to  invention.  Inventions,  he  says,  are  the 
products  of  the  mere  love  of  invention.  No  inventor  is 
ever  motived  by  any  thought  of  making  money  by  them. 
It  is  the  love  of  money  that  buys  these  inventions  up ; 
and  inventions  having  been  bought  up,  according  to  our 
Christian  socialist,  the  whole  trick  is  accomplished,  and 
the  profits  begin  to  pour  at  once  into  the  pockets  of  the 
covetous  man.  A  person  who  can  speak  in  this  way 
knows  very  little  about  real  inventors.  In  the  first 
place,  inventors,  as  anyone  who  has  had  dealings  with 
them  knows,  are  constantly  distinguished  by  an  insane 
expectation  of  money;  and  in  the  second  place  inventors 
are  otherwise  of  two  well-marked  classes — those  who 
can  merely  invent,  in  the  sense  that  they  can  conceive 
an  idea,  and  those  who  possess  also  the  practical  and 
business  qualities,  which  will  enable  them  to  produce 
their  invention  in  some  practical  and  marketable  form. 
So  long  as  invention  remains  an  invention  only, 
whether  resident  in  the  author's  brain,  or  exhibited  as  an 
experimental  model,  the  inventor  has  contributed  noth- 
ing to  the  wealth  or  the  welfare  of  the  world.  In  the 
one  case  his  invention  is  a  dream ;  in  the  other  case  it  is 
a  toy.  In  order  that  it  may  become  operative,  and  con- 
fer any  benefit  on  anybody  it  has  to  be  translated  into 
a  form  which  will  necessitate  all  sorts  of  knowledge  and 
calculations  with  regard  to  the  strength  of  metals,  or 
other  kinds  of  materials,  the  practical  shaping  of  a 
thousand  separate  parts,  the  designing  of  tools  by  which 
these  parts  shall  be  made,  and  the  direction  and  the 
co-ordination  of  possibly  some  thousands  of  laborers, 
every  one  of  whose  separate  products  must  ultimately 

128 


form  parts  of  one.  Some  inventors  have  been  industrial 
organizers  also;  most  of  them  as  organizers  have  been 
utterly  and  absurdly  helpless;  but  whenever  any  great 
invention  has  assumed  a  practical  form  this  realiza- 
tion of  it  has  not  been  a  mere  agreeable  exercise  per- 
formed for  the  love  of  inventing,  or  from  a  sentimental 
love  of  humanity. 

This  aloofness  from  actual  facts,  and  a  consequent 
inability  to  deal  with  them,  displays  itself  still  more 
notably  in  what  our  Christian  socialist  says  about  co- 
operation as  a  substitute  for  competition.  In  one  sense, 
when  a  number  of  men  are  associated  for  a  given  object 
on  any  terms,  they  exhibit  co-operation.  Cheops,  his 
architects,  and  the  thousands  of  slaves  who  obeyed 
them,  in  one  sense  co-operated  when  in  the  construction 
of  the  great  pyramid,  but  if  co-operation  is  used  to 
mean  anything  distinctive,  it  can  only  mean  co-operation 
on  equal  terms;  but  since,  on  the  admission  of  our 
Christian  socialist  himself,  the  productive  capacities  of 
men  are  in  the  highest  degree  unequal,  the  men  who 
produced  most  even  if  they  surrendered  nearly  all  their 
products,  would  still,  in  the  act  of  production,  be  acting 
in  an  unequal  way,  and  in  a  way  not  only  unequal  to 
that  of  most  of  their  fellows,  but  in  a  way  that  was 
different  in  kind.  For  our  Christian  socialist,  if  he 
will  examine  the  matter  carefully,  will  perceive  the  fact 
which  even  socialists  are  now  coming  to  acknowledge — 
namely,  that  the  exceptionally  able  men  exert  their  pro- 
ductive ability  not  by  laboring  themselves,  but  by  direct- 
the  fact  that  in  the  actual  business  of  production  the 
ing  the  labor  of  others.  Nothing,  therefore,  can  alter 
minority  produce  by  giving  orders,  whilst  the  majority 
produce  by  obeying  them.  If  we  choose  to  speak  of  this 
state  of  things  as  co-operation  we  may  of  course  do  so ; 
but  it  is  not  co-operation  in  any  distinctive  sense.  It  is 
merely  the  kind  of  co-operation  that  exists  in  any  fac- 
tory to-day.  If  a  child  who  draws  very  badly  has  its 
hand  held  by  a  drawing  master,  and  produces,  when  , 

129 


thus  directed,  a  really  beautiful  drawing,  and  if  it  were 
to  exhibit  this  masterpiece,  saying,  "I  and  so-and-so 
drew  it  together,"  any  one  would  describe  such  a  child 
as  a  wretched  little  boastful  liar.  In  the  same  way  the 
least  intelligent  of  Mr.  Edison's  workmen  might  say  he 
and  Mr.  Edison  were  the  joint  or  co-operative  producers 
of  some  new  marvel  of  Mr.  Edison's  ingenuity,  but  if 
what  the  man  meant  by  this  was  anything  more  than  a 
platitude,  and  if  he  said  it  to  some  other  employer  in 
order  to  recommend  himself  as  a  man  of  exceptional 
talent,  the  character  which  he  thus  gave  himself  would 
be  nothing  short  of  fraudulent. 

How,  then,  would  co-operation,  as  dreamed  of  by 
Christian  socialists,  alter  the  situation  which  actually 
exists  to-day?  It  would  leave  existing  inequalities  of 
productive  power  untouched,  and  would  alter  these  only 
by  introducing  one  inequality  more — and  one  of  a  kind 
very  much  more  profound.  The  contemplated  alteration 
would  consist  in  a  radical  alteration  of  the  motives  by 
which  men  are  stimulated  to  do  their  utmost  in  indus- 
trial work ;  but  this  alteration  would  be  confined  to  one 
class  only — that  is  to  say,  the  men  whose  efforts  were 
most  productive.  This  minority,  and  the  less  efficient 
majority,  would  be  placed,  from  the  nature  of  the  case, 
on  a  totally  different  footing;  for  amongst  the  men  who 
produced  little  no  change  at  all  would  be  required. 
They  would  not  be  asked  to  give  up  any  single  thing. 
On  the  contrary,  they  would  be  taught  to  expect  not 
only  the  full  result  of  their  own  labor,  but  also  an 
indefinite  bonus  abstracted  from  the  products  of  other 
men ;  and  it  requires  no  revolution  in  human  nature  to 
respond  to  a  teaching  which  suggests  such  promises  as 
these.  The  moral  revolution  is  to  be  confined  to  the 
great  producers  only.  There  is  not  only  to  be  one  law 
for  the  poor  and  another  law  for  the  rich;  but  there  is 
to  be  one  kind  of  Christianity  for  the  poor  and  another 
for  the  rich  as  well ;  and  the  former  are  to  be  taught  to 
accept  with  instinctive  enthusiasm  principles  which  the 

130 


latter  meanwhile  are  being  virtually  taught  to  repudiate. 
Whilst  the  majority  of  men  are  invited  to  took  forward 
to  more  than  they  produce,  the  able  men  are  ih.'Hed  to 
welcome  with  equal  avidity  the  prospect  of  fee  ng 
allowed  to  retain  only  a  hundredth  part  of  what  they 
produce. 

The  able  men,  however,  would  still  remain  the  source 
to  which  the  wealth  in  question  is  due;  and  it  would 
have  to  be  got  out  of  them,  or  through  them,  no  matter 
by  what  process  it  was  taken. 

Now,  if  we  may  judge  from  the  moral  programme  of 
Christian  socialism,  it  would  be  got  out  of  the  able  men 
by  some  curious  process  of  spiritual  conversion — a  sort 
of  conversion  de  luxe,  applicable  to  and  required  by  the 
able  men  only;  but  though  Christian  socialists  profess 
to  have  confidence  in  the  practicability  of  this  pro- 
cedure, it  is  evident  from  the  utterances  of  the  writer 
with  whom  we  are  now  dealing  that  they  are  not  quite 
so  confident  as  they  seem ;  and  that  what  they  really 
rely  upon  is  not  conversion  but  coercion ;  for  our  author 
elsewhere  indicates  that  in  order  to  get  the  products  of 
the  great  producers  away  from  them,  it  will  be  neces- 
sary to  abolish  all  ownership  of  private  capital  by  law 
and  make  the  state  the  sole  employer  in  all  branches  of 
productive  industry;  and  that  the  able  men  would  give 
their  services  to  state  production  as  effectively  as  they 
give  it  now  to  production  under  the  individualistic  sys- 
tem, is  shown,  he  says,  by  the  success  of  such  enter- 
prises as  the  state  postoffice,  the  state  fire-brigade,  and 
we  may  add — as  many  secular  socialists  add,  who  make 
use  of  the  same  arguments — the  life-boat  service. 

Now  here  again  we  see  the  singular  looseness  of 
thought  which  Christian  socialists  bring  to  the  compli- 
cated problems  with  which  they  deal,  in  the  first  place — 
to  repeat  what  I  have  had  occasion  to  observe  else- 
where, the  postoffice  is  not  a  productive  business  at  all. 
It  is  a  purely  distributive  enterprise;  it  distributes  com- 
modities, namely  letters;  and  if  any  product  is  the  off- 


spring  of  pure- Individualism,  it  is  a  letter.  As  to  the 
fire-brigade^  and  the  life-boat  system,  I  will  not  dwell 
on  the  puvious  fact  that  these  are  not  productive  either. 
I  YJ."I'  only  observe  that  we  do  find  in  both  these  serv- 
770s  the  most  strenuous  and  devoted  effort,  without 
thought  of  exceptional  gain;  but  both  these  deal  with 
circumstances  happily  and  necessarily  exceptional.  If 
all  life  were  a  continuous  conflagration  or  shipwreck, 
in  which  everyone  alike  had  to  battle  for  bare  exist- 
ence, everyone  would  do  his  utmost  without  thought  of 
personal  wealth ;  only  under  circumstances  such  as  they 
there  would  be  no  wealth  to  be  gained  by  anybody. 
There  is  no  analogy  between  cases  in  which  all  are 
struggling  for  life  and  the  case  of  the  industrial  pro- 
cess distinctive  of  the  modern  world,  nine-tenths  of 
whose  efficiency  is  devoted  to  the  multiplication  of 
superfluities.  A  strong  swimmer  will  risk  his  life  in 
order  to  help  a  weak  one ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  an 
able  producer  will  concentrate  all  his  powers  on  improv- 
ing some  textile  industry  merely  in  order  that  another 
man  may  wear  a  satin  necktie  instead  of  a  cotton  one. 
He  will  cheapen  the  satin  neckties,  and  will  gratify 
thousands  by  doing  so ;  but  we  may  safely  say  that  from 
each  one  of  these  gratified  thousands  he  will  expect  and 
will  naturally  demand  some  small  remuneration  for 
himself. 

The  question  is,  then,  is  it  likely  that  this  natural 
demand,  which  Christian  socialism  really  assumes  will 
remain  unchanged  and  will  be  even  accentuated  amongst 
those  who  produce  least,  will  be  eradicated  or  rather 
inverted  by  Christian  socialist  preaching,  amongst  the 
peculiar  type  of  men — hard-headed,  and  concentrated  on 
the  minutest  details  of  industry,  who  produce  most? 
Are  they  likely  to  become  suddenly  indifferent  to  the 
natural  reward  of  their  talents,  or  be  willing  to  serve  a 
state  whose  sole  distinctive  function  would  be  to  take 
this  reward  away  from  them? 

To  suppose  that  they  would  be  is  quite  of  a  piece  with 
132 


the  supposition  that  steel  is  a  natural  product,  with 
which  invention  has  nothing  to  do/  ,ind  that  all  tne 
machinery  at  Pittsburg,  and  all  the  steel  ^products  pro- 
duced there,  belong  to  the  Steel  Trust  only  because  the 
heads  of  the  Trust  and  their  officials,  being  a  gocJ  deal 
stronger  than  the  mass  of  men  around  them,  manaV'd 
to  pick  these  things  up  as  though  they  were  a  heap  or 
apples. 

The  fact,  however,  still  remains — though  our  author 
does  not  allude  to  it — that  the  principles  which  he  advo- 
cates are,  as  we  know  from  history,  actually  susceptible 
of  adoption  by  a  certain  number  of  persons.  Robert 
Owen,  for  example,  in  connection  with  whose  schemes 
and  theories  the  word  socialism  first  came  into  exist- 
ence, was  a  very  able  business  man.  Again,  in  many 
places  and  notably  in  this  country  countless  attempts 
have  been  made  to  establish  productive  communities  on 
precisely  the  principles  which  Christian  socialism  advo- 
cates ;  and  some  of  these  communities  have  met  with 
some  measure  of  success.  But  in  so  far  as  they  have 
succeeded  the  secret  of  their  success  has  been  this — 
that  they  have  consisted  of  picked  men,  of  men  with 
exceptional  temperaments,  which  no  more  represent  the 
temperaments  of  men.  at  large  than  the  Catholic  monks 
do,  whose  lives  are  vowed  to  celibacy.  Moreover,  even 
with  this  fact  in  their  favor,  that  they  have  been  made  up 
of  picked  men,  the  majority  of  these  communities  are 
said  by  those  who  have  studied  the  question  not  to  have 
lasted  on  an  average  for  more  than  two  years.  Fur- 
ther, as  I  saw  pointed  out  only  the  other  day,  one  of 
longest  lived  of  these,  which  was  not  dissolved  till  after 
more  than  forty  years  of  existence,  divided,  when  it 
broke  up,  equally  amongst  all  its  members  all  the  capi- 
tal which  accumulated  during  something  like  half  a  cen- 
tury, and  what  each  man  got  was  only  $1,300.  Atay 
skilled  mechanic  at  Pittsburg  might  save  twice  this  in 
half  a  dozen  years.  Again,  there  was  a  community 
called  Fraternal  Community  No.  I  of  the  practical 

133 


Christian  Republic.  This  satisfied  for  a  time  the  wants 
of  its  members,  Itit  these  never,  at  its  most  flourishing 
time,  amounted  to  more  than  two  hundred ;  and  even 
the  two  hundred  at  last  had  to  admit  that  their  enter- 
prise was  a  failure.  And  what  has  happened  at  the 
spc;°  where  these  two  hundred  persons  failed  to  support 
tnemselves  by  production  organized  on  Christian  social- 
ist principles?  An  answer  was  given  lately  to  this 
question  in  one  of  the  New  York  papers.  "The  habita- 
tion of  this  community,"  it  said,  "has  been  supplanted 
by  a  model  village  erected  by  a  cotton  manufacturer  for 
three  thousand  of  his  own  workmen." 

The  moral  of  this  is  that,  though  the  principles  of 
Christian  socialism,  as  applied  to  production,  may  keep 
quasi-monastic  knots  of  picked  and  peculiar  men  in  a 
kind  of  penurious  comfort  so  long  as  the  first  enthusi- 
asm lasts,  yet  these  principles  are  workable  amongst 
small  knots  of  men  only;  and  that  these  men,  instead  of 
dividing  among  themselves  any  of  that  superfluous 
wealth  which  Christian  socialism  wishes  to  appropriate, 
are  powerless  to  produce  such  wealth  and  consequently 
have  none  of  it  to  divide. 

If  Christian  socialists,  however,  think  differently,  it 
is  perfectly  open  to  them  to  try  any  number  of  experi- 
ments. Why  do  not  the  socialist  clergy  come  down 
from  their  pulpits  and  found  productive  communities, 
instead  of  merely  talking  about  them?  They  do  not  do 
this,  because  they  cannot.  They  are  absolutely  deficient 
in  productive  ability  themselves;  and  they  can  offer  no 
inducement  which  will  appeal  to  the  men  who  possess  it. 

And  now  let  me  turn  to  a  question  which  I  have  not 
yet  touched  upon,  and  ask  in  what  sense  Christian 
socialism  is  really  Christian.  I  alluded  to  some  verses  in 
our  Christian  socialist  newspaper,  in  which  the  writer 
asserts  that  Christ  wore  the  thorny  crown  that  holy 
labor  might  be  free.  Now,  when  Christ  lived  slavery 
was  prevalent  throughout  the  Roman  Empire;  and  yet 
Christ  said  nothing  about  the  emancipation  of  slaves. 

134 


Can  we  believe,  then,  that  His  teaching  in  the  Gospels 
was  a  kind  of  prophetic  cryptogram,  dealing  with  the 
economics  of  society  nineteen  hundred  years  later? 
Again,  when  Christian  socialists  talk  about  getting  the 
great  producers  to  renounce  their  wealth  voluntarily, 
or  else  to  abstract  it  from  them  by  the  nationalization 
of  capital,  the  larger  part  of  the  wealth  which  they 
desire  to  see  redistributed  consists,  as  I  said  just  now, 
for  the  most  part  of  superfluities.  Was  it  part  of  the 
teaching  of  Christ  that  the  happiness  and  the  blessed- 
ness of  a  man  is  proportionate  to  the  number  of  super- 
fluities which  he  possesses  without  either  inheriting  or 
producing  them? 

It  seems  to  me,  and  I  hope  I  shall  be  forgiven  for 
saying  this,  that  the  underlying  reason  which  is  prompt- 
ing so  many  of  the  clergy,  to  adopt  these  incoherent 
principles  to  which  they  give  the  name  of  Christian 
socialism,  is  to  be  found  in  a  remarkable  passage  in  the 
article  which  we  have  been  taking  for  our  text.  "If  we 
Churchmen,"  says  the  writer,  "would  build  hospitals, 
erect  churches,  possess  parish  houses,  support  missions, 
we  must  go  to  the  trust  magnates  and  kneel."  Now, 
what  he  means  is  not  that  he  has  to  kneel  literally,  but 
that  he  and  his  brother  churchmen  have  to  go  to  the 
men,  by  whom,  as  they  admit  themselves,  the  surplus 
wealth  of  the  modern  world  is  produced,  and  ask  them 
to  give  some  of  it  for  such  and  such  good  purposes; 
and  that  a  man  like  a  clergyman,  who  economically  pro- 
duces nothing,  and  who  fancies  that  the  production  of 
steel  has  nothing  to  do  with  invention,  to  have  to  ask 
a  man  who  produces  much  to  give  him  a  portion  of  his 
products,  and  actually  to  have  to  say  "Thank  you"- 
this  is  what  seems  to  rankle  most  deeply  in  the  breast 
of  this  humble  follower  of  Christ.  Indeed,  Christian 
socialism,  viewed  in  the  light  of  this  passage,  exhibits 
itself  as  a  scheme  by  which  the  socialistic  clergy  may 
acquire  wealth  which  they  cannot  produce,  and  may  yet 
avoid  the  degradation  of  having  to  say  thank  you  for  it 

135 


and  may  be  able  to  offer  to  the  Lord  that  which  has  cost 
them  nothing. 

An  unworthier  attitude  of  mind  it  seems  to  me  impos- 
sible to  imagine,  or  one  more  practically  helpless.  If 
there  is  any  Christianity  about  it,  it  is  Christianity  in 
its  most  degenerate  form.  It  is  the  attitude  of  a  man 
who  will  go  about  sighing  and  weeping  because  the  peo- 
ple have  no  water,  and  then  will  feel  it  a  degradation 
to  acknowledge  the  practical  superiority  of  the  able  man 
who  sinks  an  artesian  well. 

But  I  will  not  wind  up  with  words  which  may  be  cal- 
culated to  pain  some.  I  will  give  to  my  criticism  of  the 
principles  of  Christian  socialism  a  form  which  can 
offend  nobody  by  indicating  a  contrast  and  an  alterna- 
tive to  them.  Of  all  the  Christian  bodies  who  have  done 
work  on  a  large  scale  amongst  the  poor,  few  can  com- 
pare— and  certainly  not  the  Christian  socialists — with 
the  Salvation  Army.  And  yet  the  leaders  of  the  Salva- 
tion Army  have  never  been  tinged  by  socialism.  For 
example,  General  B.  Booth  says :  "It  would  be  the 
merest  folly  to  predict  that  material  inequality  will  not 
exist  to  a  degree,  and  that  the  power  of  the  rich  will 
not  exist,  as  it  has  always  existed."  The  great 
thing,  he  says,  is  that  the  richer  and  the  poorer  classes 
should  understand  each  other;  and  that  the  complaints 
of  the  poor  should  show,  and  the  minds  of  the  rich 
realize,  the  thousand  and  one  causes  of  particular  social 
evils,  and  the  thousand  and  one  ways  in  which  they  may 
be  severally  alleviated.  For  example,  some  of  the  worst 
evils  from  which  a  large  portion  of  the  laboring  class 
in  our  modern  cities  suffer  are  evils  which  require 
architectural  and  sanitary  remedies;  and  for  each  kind 
of  evil  there  is  some  special  remedy  corresponding  to  it. 
Take,  for  example,  child  labor  in  England.  The  worst  evils 
attendant  on  this  system  in  England  found  their  remedy 
through  the  efforts  of  one  of  the  most  conservative  of 
old-fashioned  Englishmen,  namely,  the  celebrated  Lord 
Shaftsbury.  Lord  Shaftsbury  did  not  waste  his  time  in 

136 


making  eyes  at  the  moon,  and  moaning  that  before  any- 
thing worth  doing  could  be  done  the  whole  of  society 
would  have  to  be  turned  upside  down.  He  did  not  want 
to  disturb  society  as  a  whole  at  all.  He  simply  set 
himself  to  deal  with  the  particular  problem  before  him; 
and  in  consequence  of  his  initiative  what  he  aimed  at 
was  accomplished. 

In  short,  there  are  and  always  will  be  a  number  of 
social  questions,  which  must  from  time  to  time  be  dealt 
with  as  they  arise;  but  there  neither  is  nor  will  be  any 
social  question.  That  is  to  say,  there  never  has  been 
or  will  be  any  one  panacea  by  which  all  social  evils  will 
be  cured,  any  more  than  there  ever  will  be  a  patent  pill 
which  will  at  once  be  a  remedy  for  a  cough  and  a  broken 
leg,  or  which  will  make  men,  as  a  whole,  either  immune 
from  all  disease  or  immortal.  And  Christian  socialism, 
so  far  as  I  understand  it,  simply  represents  faith  in 
some  patent  pill,  the  very  composition  of  which  is  hardly 
understood  by  the  vendors,  and  is  offered  by  them  as  a 
cure  for  evils  of  whose  origin  they  understand  nothing. 

In  other  words,  Christian  socialism,  so  far  as  I  under- 
stand it,  aims  at  altering  the  existing  situation,  and  by 
seeking  either  to  spoliate  the  great  producer  against  his 
will,  by  treating  him  as  an  irreclaimable  criminal,  or 
inducing  him  to  submit  to  spoliation  by  turning  him  into 
an  impossible  saint,  the  rest  of  the  community  suffer- 
ing no  change  at  all,  except  that  of  being  taught  to 
keep  their  mouths  constantly  open  in  order  to  catch  the 
viands  which  fall  from  the  great  producer's  table. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  temper  of  mind  thus  indi- 
cated is  based,  not  only  in  a  complete  ignorance  both 
of  human  nature  and  the  endless  complicated  details  of 
modern  industry,  but  is  also  eminently  unchristian.  It 
resembles  the  temper  of  men  who,  in  their  eagerness 
to  suppress  vice,  would  condemn  and  eliminate  from 
humanity  all  sexual  instinct,  in  which  case  humanity, 
with  its  virtues  as  well  as  its  vices,  would  soon  come  to 
an  end. 

137 


The  Christian  method,  cm  the  contrary,  so  far  as  I 
understand  it,  is  not  to  revolutionize,  still  less  to  eradi- 
cate, any  one  of  man's  natural  propensities,  but  to 
guide,  elevate  and  ennoble  them;  and  thus  the  true 
Christian  message  to  the  great  producers  of  the  world 
would  be  this:  "Do  not  be  ashamed  of  your  riches;  do 
not  discard  the  control  of  them;  but  since  they  have 
endowed  you  with  the  means  of  living  and  acting  on  a 
larger  scale  than  can  ever  be  possible  for  the  great 
majority  of  men,  let  your  lives  on  this  large  scale  be  a 
wholesome  pattern  to  others ;  partly  in  the  way  in  which 
you,  like  all  other  men,  seek  your  own  daily  enjoyment 
amongst  your  friends  and  families ;  partly  in  the  way  in 
which,  by  means  of  your  ample  resources  you  are  able 
to  assist  and  show  your  sympathy  for  your  neighbors, 
and  partly  in  the  integrity  which  you  exhibit  in  dealing 
with  the  great  material  interests  entrusted  to  you. 

Let  those  who  have  only  a  few  things  in  respect  of 
which  they  can  be  faithful,  find  a  good  example  in  you 
who  have  the  opportunity  of  being  faithful  in  many 
things. 


....  l(,,tfor>i 


OVERDUE. 

===== 

DEC  , 


JUN    2 


?& 


T,D  21-100m-8,'34 


YB 


